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May
on collision course with Conservative backbenchers over hard Brexit
As
prime minister prioritises control of immigration and withdrawal from
EU law, MPs press for deal that would keep UK in single market
Anushka Asthana,
Peter Walker and Jon Henley
Monday 3 October
2016 07.12 BST
Theresa May insisted
that controlling immigration and withdrawing from the jurisdiction of
the European court of justice would be her priorities during EU exit
negotiations, the strongest indication yet that she will lean towards
a hard Brexit.
On the first day of
the Conservative party conference in Birmingham, the prime minister
pledged to trigger article 50 before the end of March and used her
opening speech to spell out that greater border controls would trump
any attempt to remain a member of the single market.
Her remarks
immediately triggered a pointed response from the president of the
European council, Donald Tusk, who tweeted his appreciation of May’s
announcement about the timing of the start of the exit talks while
warning that the rest of the EU was ready to “safeguard its
interests” in the talks to come.
May said: “I want
[the deal] to give British companies the maximum freedom to trade and
operate in the single market – and let European businesses do the
same here.”
She admitted that
the negotiations would require some “give and take”, adding: “But
let me be clear, we are not leaving the European Union only to give
up control of immigration again and we are not leaving only to return
to the jurisdiction of the European court of justice” – a move
that has placed her on a collision course with pro-EU backbenchers.
May laid out plans
for a “great repeal bill”, under which four decades of EU
legislation would become part of British law and could then be
unpicked. However, she insisted that workers’ rights would be
guaranteed in law while she was prime minister, although the
government would not list any examples of such legislation.
There was a positive
reaction in Germany and Italy to a clear timetable. European leaders
including the EU commission head, Jean-Claude Juncker, the German
chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the Italian prime minister, Matteo
Renzi, have said publicly that Britain must be allowed time to
prepare its position.
But, in private
talks with the prime minister, all have pushed hard for a clearer
idea of plans, particularly because of the need for the UK to
complete Brexit before the next elections to the European parliament
in 2019.
Joseph Muscat, the
prime minister of Malta, which will be holding the rotating EU
presidency when article 50 is triggered, tweeted that his
administration was “geared to handle” the process.
But in another blunt
reminder that any attempt by Britain to push for single market
privileges while curbing EU immigration was unlikely to succeed,
Muscat added that while Malta would be “honest brokers for fair
deal”, the four single market freedoms – including movement –
“cannot be decoupled”.
May herself
attempted to dismiss the term “hard Brexit” on Sunday, alongside
that of “soft Brexit”, arguing that they represented a false
dichotomy – although it is widely believed that the more the UK
insists on immigration control, the more likely EU leaders are to
close access to the single market.
Hitting back at
those who have argued that parliament should have a say before the
process begins, May warned that the public had backed Brexit with
“emphatic clarity”.
“So now it is up
to the government not to question, quibble or backslide on what we
have been instructed to do, but to get on with the job,” she said,
“because those people who argue that article 50 can only be
triggered after agreement in both Houses of Parliament are not
standing up for democracy, they’re trying to subvert it. They’re
not trying to get Brexit right; they’re trying to kill it by
delaying it. They are insulting the intelligence of the British
people.”
Referring to a high
court challenge, being heard next week, which questions the
government’s right to fire the Brexit starting gun without
parliamentary approval, May said the attorney general, Jeremy Wright,
would resist the efforts.
But she has placed
herself at loggerheads with a number of Conservative backbenchers who
want the government to pursue a soft Brexit and think there should be
a vote prior to article 50.
Dominic Grieve, the
former attorney general, told the Guardian that he believed strongly
that parliament ought to have such a role. He admitted that MPs could
not disregard the “advisory” vote but said: “The danger of such
an approach is if you undermine the convention in this way you set a
very bad precedent. Government is embarking on a difficult and
extensive exercise and to do it without the support of parliament is
a mistaken approach.”
Anna Soubry, the
former Tory business minister, argued that May should be wary of
being “gung-ho” on article 50 and said the EU held “most of the
cards in negotiations”. She said Britain should be pressing for a
deal that keeps the country in the single market.
Within May’s
cabinet there are splits, with sources suggesting Philip Hammond, the
chancellor, is pushing for the best economic deal with the EU, having
told the Telegraph that he believed the “implicit” message from
the referendum was the need to protect the country’s economy.
Speaking after May
at the conference, the secretary of state for Brexit, David Davis,
stressed “the clear message from the referendum is this: we must be
able to control immigration”.
He said this would
be balanced as best as possible with trade: “We’re looking at all
the options. And we’ll be prepared for any outcome. But it
certainly won’t be to anyone’s benefit to see an increase in
barriers to trade, in either direction.
“So we want to
maintain the freest possible trade between us, without betraying the
instruction we have received from the British people to take back
control of our own affairs.”
Others supporting
Brexit were pleased with May’s intervention. Dominic Raab, the
former justice minister, said the prime minister had “put some meat
on the bones of the Brexit strategy”, offering greater certainty to
business.
Meanwhile, Charles
Grant, the director of the Centre for European Reform, has published
a paper in which he reveals that negotiators in other countries
including France and Germany are preparing to stand their ground in
Brexit negotiations. They believe freedom of movement is a central
part of the single market and are reluctant to make concessions in
other areas.
“She is trying to
square a circle and none of us know how she plans to do it, but
British companies will not be in the single market if she limits
immigration and spurns or rejects ECJ rulings,” said Grant.
On repealing EU law
and then unpicking parts of legislation, he added: “The more our
laws diverge from those of our partners, the less access we will have
to the single market.”
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Theresa
May sets Brexit course on hard
UK
prime minister sides with her hardliners and makes spring date for EU
divorce talks.
By TOM MCTAGUE and
CHARLIE COOPER 10/2/16, 10:03 PM CET
BIRMINGHAM —
Theresa May used her first address to her party as prime minister to
deliver an iron message in a velvet glove: Britain doesn’t want a
fight with the EU, but forget any talk of a soft Brexit.
Speaking on the
first day of the U.K. Conservative Party’s annual conference in
Birmingham Sunday, May looked beyond those in the hall and made it
clear to those watching elsewhere in Europe that she would not even
discuss the continuation of free movement after Britain’s exit from
the EU.
May’s intervention
on Sunday is the clearest indication yet that Britain is heading for
a hard Brexit outside the European single market. In the battle
between Brexit hardliners and Cabinet skeptics such as Chancellor of
the Exchequer Philip Hammond, May appears have sided with the first
group most closely associated with Boris Johnson, David Davis and
Liam Fox.
If Brexit means
anything, May told the Conservative Party conference, it has to mean
the full repatriation of political power from Brussels. Anything less
was unacceptable. “We are going to be a fully-independent,
sovereign country,” May said. “A country that is no longer part
of a political union with supranational institutions that can
override national parliaments and courts.”
Brexit, May added,
meant having “the freedom to make our own decisions on a whole host
of different matters, from how we label our food to the way in which
we choose to control immigration.”
“Let
me be clear. We are not leaving the European Union only to give up
control of immigration again. And we are not leaving only to return
to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice” —
Theresa May
The upshot, if May
is good to her word, is a U.K. completely extricated from the
Brussels machine and outside the single market and its open borders
to labor. In the upcoming Brexit negotiations the only thing left to
discuss, according to the prime minister, is the terms on which
Britain and Europe continue to trade.
Exit date
After a summer in
which she revealed little more than insisting “Brexit means Brexit”
May’s speech was intended to draw a line under the debate about
whether Britain would really make a clean break with Brussels. Senior
political figures, from Nicolas Sarkozy to the Labour’s Party’s
defeated leadership challenger Owen Smith, have raised the prospect
of a second referendum to keep Britain in the EU.
May said she would
begin the formal process of leaving the EU by the end of March 2017,
firing the gun on a two year exit negotiation. She also announced
that the government would introduce a Great Repeal Bill, annulling
the 1972 European Communities Act which took Britain into the
European Union. The bill, which will not come into force until the
U.K. formally leaves the EU, would end the primacy of European law in
the U.K.
The proposal, in
effect, dares Labour and other pro-European MPs — who make up a
majority of the House of Commons — to vote against the will of the
electorate. If the government was defeated, it would almost certainly
trigger a snap general election to give the prime minister a mandate
to enact Brexit.
If MPs do vote the
bill through, however, May will have a blank check to negotiate the
terms of Britain’s withdrawal from the EU, with MPs already having
given their assent to Brexit.
No choice
In May’s address
to party activists, she insisted too many people had not accepted the
result of the referendum and were beset by “muddled thinking”
over the future relationship between Britain and the EU. The prime
minister stressed repeatedly that the referendum result had been
“clear” and her Government would not “question, quibble or
backslide on what we have been instructed to do.”
The prime minister
said there was “no such thing as a choice between ‘soft Brexit’
and ‘hard Brexit,” insisting this was a false dichotomy
“propagated by people who, I am afraid to say, have still not
accepted the result of the referendum.”
In rejecting talk of
a “soft Brexit” May is all-but rejecting the compromise “Norway
option” floated by some pro-Europeans that would see Britain remain
in the single market but accept free movement and contributions to
the EU budget. May’s claim that this did not, in turn, necessitate
a “hard Brexit” is intended to calm fears that Britain will not
be able to negotiate a Canadian-stye free trade agreement to take its
place.
“The
truth is that too many people are letting their thinking about our
future relationship with the EU be defined by the way the
relationship has worked in the past,” she said.
In an attempt to
define Britain’s red lines in negotiations with Brussels, May said
the upcoming talks would not be about “negotiating away all our
sovereignty again.”
“It is not going
to be about any of those matters over which the country has just
voted to regain control. It is not, therefore, a negotiation to
establish a relationship anything like the one we have had for the
last forty years or more.
“It is going to be
an agreement between an independent, sovereign United Kingdom and the
European Union.”
The claim — a
statement of the obvious in some regards — is designed to bury the
prospect of an EU-lite arrangement in which some sovereignty is
pooled in return for free trade. It is a nod to her MPs’
Thatcherite dream of an independent, free-market Britain trading
openly with the world outside the EU.
This is an
opportunity not just to clear the air but to create a more
comfortable relationship with you European neighbours that works
better for all of us” — Brexit minister David Davis
In May’s brief
opening speech to conference ahead of her main address on Wednesday,
she dismissed claims there was a “trade-off” between controlling
immigration and trading with Europe. “That is the wrong way of
looking at things,” she insisted. It was a message her audience
wanted to hear, but one also directed at Brussels: Britain wants a
free-trade deal, not a messy single market compromise.
She called for a
“mature, cooperative relationship” with EU built on free trade,
saying she wanted British companies to have “the maximum freedom to
trade with and operate in the single market.” But she added: “Let
me be clear. We are not leaving the European Union only to give up
control of immigration again. And we are not leaving only to return
to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice.”
May rejected the
idea, advocated by hardline Eurosekptics in her party, of a snap
Brexit and insisted that Britain would play by the rules while it
remained an EU member. “Everything we do as we leave the EU will be
consistent with the law and our treaty obligations,” she said.
She repeated a
promise, first made in a newspaper interview Sunday, that Britain
would invoke Article 50 before April 2017, thereby legally trigger
the start of negotiations with Brussels.
Boris and I
Presenting a unified
front with Brexit minister David Davis and new Foreign Secretary
Boris Johnson, May sought to project an image of a self-assured U.K.,
confident of securing a deal from the EU that, while severing all
political ties, would be in the economic interests of both.
“We joined a
common market, an economic community,” Davis said in his speech.
“We’ve never really been comfortable being part of what is in
reality a political project. We’re now leaving that project. This
is an opportunity not just to clear the air but to create a more
comfortable relationship with you European neighbours that works
better for all of us.”
Davis was followed
by Johnson, whose speech sought to portray Britain as a “soft power
superpower.” Johnson insisted that the U.K. would become a global
champion of free trade outside the EU, but at the same time pledged
to continue cooperation with the bloc on issues of mutual interest,
such as sanctions against Russia, and anti-trafficking operations in
the Mediterranean.
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