Theresa May faces hostility on all sides as she fights to
save Brexit deal
British prime minister rocked by resignations of two Cabinet
ministers as she tries to sell her EU divorce plan.
By CHARLIE
COOPER 11/15/18, 2:46 PM CET
Updated 11/16/18, 3:25 AM CET
British Prime Minister Theresa May is struggling to salvage
the Brexit deal as she faces challenges on all sides
LONDON — British Prime Minister Theresa May’s premiership was
left hanging by a thread Thursday after a chaotic day in Westminster during
which two of her top team resigned and a handful of prominent Brexiteers said
they would topple her over the draft Brexit deal she negotiated with the EU.
The threat of a challenge to the prime minister’s authority,
just as time runs out to negotiate a divorce deal with the European Union
before the U.K.’s looming exit in March 2019, plunges British politics into
greater levels of uncertainty and increases the chances that the U.K. will exit
with no deal at all, risking significant economic disruption.
The prime minister, who secured Cabinet agreement for the
plan on Wednesday evening only for her Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab to resign
on Thursday morning, struck a defiant tone at a press conference in Downing
Street Thursday afternoon and vowed to “see this through” in the face of open
hostility among her own party.
May told reporters her party and the country should “unite
behind” the draft agreement, warning that to step back now would lead to “deep
and grave uncertainty” for the country.
But in a fractious House of Commons appearance earlier on
Thursday only a handful of Conservative MPs spoke up in support, and May was
met with fierce opposition from the Labour Party, from Brexiteer MPs within her
own party and from her Northern Irish backers, the Democratic Unionist Party.
Leading Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg formally called for her to “step aside.”
The prime minister now faces yet another battle for her own
political survival as well as a fight to push her deal through the House of
Commons, which must approve the agreement.
A leadership challenge from within her own party would be
triggered if 48 Conservative MPs are prepared to declare they no longer have
confidence in the prime minister. Even if that doesn’t happen, May is looking
at a hard fight to win parliamentary support for the deal. With opposition on
all sides increasingly vocal, including from the opposition Labour Party, May
is under the most sustained pressure of her premiership. There is no clear
precedent for what happens next in the event that the prime minister cannot
retain enough support to drive her Brexit plan through.
Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab resigned Thursday morning |
Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP via Getty Images
The British pound, which had strengthened on news of the
deal and Cabinet support on Wednesday, dropped again following Raab’s
resignation, reflecting increasing concerns the U.K. could crash out of the EU
with no deal at all in March 2019.
Leadership challenge
Rees-Mogg, chair of the European Research Group, an
organizing committee of Brexiteer MPs, accused the prime minister of breaking
her promises on Brexit and asked her to give him a reason not to formally call
for a leadership challenge within the Conservative Party.
An hour later, Rees-Mogg told a meeting of the ERG in
Westminster that he would be writing to Graham Brady, chair of the 1922
committee of Tory MPs, who under Conservative Party rules must call a
leadership contest if 48 MPs write to him expressing no confidence in May.
In his letter to Brady, Rees-Mogg said it is in the national
interest for May to stand aside.
“The draft withdrawal agreement presented to parliament
today has turned out to be worse than anticipated and fails to meet the
promises given to the nation by the prime minister, either on her own account
or on behalf of us all in the Conservative Party Manifesto,” he wrote.
Rees-Mogg commands the support of dozens of MPs as part of
the pro-Brexit ERG faction and his threat may be seen as an instruction for
others to also write to Brady and trigger a contest.
The ERG’s deputy chairman, Steve Baker, said in a statement:
“We’ve tried everything to change policy but not the Prime Minister but it has
not worked. It is too late. We need a new leader.”
May was told by another Brexiteer MP, Mark Francois, that it
looked “mathematically impossible” for her to get her draft deal through the
House of Commons. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn made clear his party would not
support it, Brexiteer Conservatives seem ranged against it, and Northern
Ireland’s DUP now seems set to reject it.
The Northern Irish party’s Westminster leader Nigel Dodds,
in cutting criticism, said it would be a “waste of time” to explain his
objections “since she clearly doesn’t listen.”
Anger at the deal among Conservative Euroskeptics and the
DUP centers on a plan to avoid a hard border in Northern Ireland regardless of
the outcome of the future trade negotiation.
The so-called backstop arrangement, which May insisted
neither she nor the EU want to see come into force, would see the U.K. remain
in a de facto customs union, with Northern Ireland continuing to operate under
some single market regulations, and therefore under different rules to the U.K.
in some sectors.
May appeared to pin her hopes of persuading MPs to back the
deal on the promise that the backstop will never be required and that the
permanent future relationship between the U.K. and the EU would meet her
previous pledges to “take back control” of the U.K.’s borders, laws and
spending, while protecting the union and securing “frictionless trade” with the
EU.
My deal or no deal
Despite intense pressure, May showed no sign of changing
course. During her Commons statement, she ruled out extending the Article 50
negotiating period, or calling for a second referendum. Facing calls from
several Labour MPs and from former Remain-supporting MPs in her own party to
back another vote, May said she does not want to follow other EU members who
she said had ignored the wishes of their voters in previous referendums.
May said there would shortly be “more detail” for MPs on the
future relationship.
“I’ve seen on other European issues … other member states of
the European Union taking matters back to their populace, having a referendum,
the vote has come out against what the EU wanted and effectively there has then
been a second vote, a sort of ‘go back and think again’ vote. I don’t think
it’s right that we should do that in this country,” she said.
U.K. officials said that the second document published
Tuesday, a political statement rather than a legally binding treaty, which
outlines both sides’ intentions for the future relationship, was not the final
text and that a more detailed document would be agreed in the run-up to a
special European Council summit on November 25. May said there would shortly be
“more detail” for MPs on the future relationship.
Both former Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab and former Work
and Pensions Secretary Esther McVey, who both resigned this morning, cited what
they called a threat to the union in their resignation letters. Two junior
ministers — Brexit Minister Suella Braverman and Northern Ireland Minister
Shailesh Vara — also resigned, as did parliamentary private secretaries
Anne-Marie Trevelyan and Ranil Jayawardena. Conservative Party Vice Chairman
Rehman Chishti also resigned.
Tom McTague and Annabelle Dickson contributed reporting.
Three scenarios for the unpredictable days ahead in London.
By TOM
MCTAGUE, CHARLIE COOPER AND ANNABELLE DICKSON 11/15/18,
11:13 PM CET Updated 11/16/18, 12:28 AM CET
Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May gives a press
conference at 10 Downing Street | Pool photo by Matt Dunham via Getty Images
LONDON — What a #(%(&@ mess — and no easy way out of it.
That’s one indisputable conclusion to draw about British
politics after a day like Thursday.
British Prime Minister Theresa May, who won support for her
exit the EU from Brussels a day before, saw multiple resignations her top team
and an imminent challenge to her leadership with a very public attack from
leading Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg and a vocal string of his supporters.
For all the uncertainty about the future outlook, the
scenarios for the coming weeks are easier to sketch out, if not to predict.
Here they are in particular order:
1.
May clings on
2.
Brexiteers have long threatened to challenge May. Now that
she has put a draft deal on the table, they have come out of hiding.
Should the hardliners fail to round up the 48 letters needed
under Conservative party rules to trigger a vote of no confidence, it’d be a
huge embarrassment to the Brexiteer cause, undermining their claims of having
the support of 80 MPs in parliament. While there is no time limit dictating
when the letters need to be submitted, in reality Brexiteers probably only have
a few days capitalize on the crisis caused by May’s draft plan.
If the challenge fails to materialize, that would be a major
boost for the prime minister and her whips who are clinging to the hope that
the threat of an impending crisis will force MPs to back her divorce agreement
with Brussels for Britain to sign up to it.
A failure to trigger a leadership contest does not, however,
prevent a parliamentary showdown for May — it delays it. One way or another,
the prime minister needs a majority in the House of Commons to back her deal
with Brussels before she can formally commit to it in Brussels.
2. May wins the backing of her party
Under Tory rules, May could not be challenged for a year
after winning a vote of no confidence. The magic number she needs to survive is
159 — 50 percent of the party’s MPs, plus one.
While many Tory MPs argue in private that her position would
be untenable should more than 100 MPs vote to remove her as leader, she would
be under no formal obligation to step aside. Asked at Thursday’s press
conference whether she would fight on even if she won by just one vote she
said: “Am I going to see this through? Yes.”
For the prime minister, however, simply staying prime
minister only solves part of her problem. Unless there’s a dramatic change in
the political mood, she still doesn’t have the numbers to force her deal
through parliament.
Privately, some ministers and Tory aides believe May could
survive MPs voting down her deal, by sitting tight, allowing market turbulence
and the prospect of a cliff-edge Brexit to focus minds to allow her to pass the
deal on the second — or third, or fourth — attempt.
This path is fraught with danger, however. While there is a
majority in the House of Commons opposed to the prime minister’s plan, she
risks a second, but much more serious, motion of no confidence being tabled
against her — this time against the government as a whole.
As long as Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party
remains fiercely opposed to the prime minister’s agreement, the government no
longer has a working majority in parliament and is at risk of losing such a
vote of no confidence.
If the House of Commons declares it has no confidence in the
government, other party leaders have 14 days to try to form a new
administration. If that does not succeed, a general election must be held six
weeks later. Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn will fancy his chances but without an
election he also lacks the numbers for an outright majority.
3. May loses backing of her party
If May loses a confidence vote on her leadership among her
own MPs, a Conservative leadership contest follows.
Under the usual procedure, candidates require two MPs to
back them (one a proposer, the other a seconder). If more than two candidates
throw their hats into the ring, the field is whittled down by secret ballots of
Conservative MPs held on Tuesdays and Thursdays until only two candidates
remain. The wider party membership then votes after a campaign period which
usually lasts a few weeks.
Because there are barely more than four months until the
U.K.’s legal departure date, it is likely that either the Tory party would need
to fast-track the process, or the government would need to request an extension
to Brexit negotiations. It’s probably easier to bend Conservative party rules
than it is to get a unanimous decision from the EU27 on an extension, so the
former scenario seems more likely.
Tory MPs could agree, as they have done in the past, to
unite behind a single candidate, obviating the need for a contest. But given
the deep divisions in the parliamentary party, it’s hard to see who would
command confidence as a unity candidate.
If no-deal looked likely (or was even favored by a new
administration), the U.K. and EU would almost certainly try to agree several
“mini-deals” to protect vital services.
Assuming the U.K. has a new Conservative leader and new
prime minister within a few weeks, it would then be up to them how to proceed
with Brussels.
Dominic Raab, the departing Brexit Secretary and certainly
one leadership contender, told Sky News on Thursday he would want to see a
renegotiation of the Northern Ireland backstop — the aspect of the deal he
resigned over.
Tory leadership contests are unpredictable (in 2016 everyone
thought Boris Johnson would win and in the end he didn’t even stand). But it’s
probable the new prime minister would be more of a Brexit true-believer than
Theresa May, given the Euroskeptic tendencies of the Conservative membership
who make the final call.
But whether such a figure — be it Boris Johnson, David
Davis, Michael Gove, Raab, or any other potential candidate — would have any
chance of wrestling a meaningfully different deal out of Brussels looks
doubtful. The EU has shown little appetite to shift red lines.
That would bring a no-deal Brexit back into play.
Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May at 10 Downing Street
If no-deal looked likely (or was even favored by a new
administration), the U.K. and EU would almost certainly try to agree several
“mini-deals” to protect vital services like air travel over each other’s
territory.
But such is the resistance to the idea of no-deal among most
British MPs, that in this scenario, there would be a risk, as is the case if
May manages to cling on, that the new prime minister would face a vote of no
confidence by an alliance of opposition parties and pro-EU Conservative MPs,
who would only need to muster a handful of votes to tip the balance and topple
the government. Then we could be in general election territory.
Any prime minister is also under a legal obligation (under
the EU Withdrawal Act) to lay a motion before MPs informing them that they plan
to pursue a “no deal” Brexit. Right now, there is no chance a majority of MPs
would back this.
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