sexta-feira, 16 de novembro de 2018

Theresa May: 'I believe in my deal' - BBC News




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.



 What’s next in Britain’s Brexit drama
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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