May's Team Rejects New Brexit Referendum After Week of
Crisis
Thomas Penny, Bloomberg News
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/may-s-team-rejects-new-brexit-referendum-after-week-of-crisis-1.1184070
(Bloomberg) --
Theresa May’s team pushed back against reports they are warming to a second
referendum on Brexit as the U.K. prime minister prepares to face Parliament on
Monday.
David Lidington, May’s effective deputy, and Chief-of-Staff
Gavin Barwell said they don’t favor another plebiscite after newspapers
reported they’d held talks on the issue. May herself launched a broadside at
former Prime Minister Tony Blair for championing a "People’s Vote."
“For Tony Blair to go to Brussels and seek to undermine our
negotiations by advocating for a second referendum is an insult to the office
he once held and the people he once served,” May said in comments released by
her office. “We cannot, as he would, abdicate responsibility for this decision.”
Speculation has intensified about a second referendum on
leaving the European Union since May withdrew a House of Common vote on her
divorce deal with Brussels when it became clear it was headed for defeat. May
then survived a bid by her own lawmakers to unseat her as leader of the
Conservative Party. She is running out of options as time runs short for
clinching a deal with the EU.
Hostile Parliament
The premier will face a hostile House of Commons -- and
further calls for another referendum -- on Monday after her appeals for help
from the bloc’s leaders were rebuffed at a summit in Brussels on Friday.
The idea of a national vote is gaining traction with both
those who hope it would stop the U.K. leaving the bloc and those who see it as
a threat that will bring Brexiteers behind May’s plan. One cabinet member said
he wants it on the table to convince them that no Brexit at all is a real
possibility.
After a Sunday Times report on plans for a new referendum,
Barwell posted on Twitter that “I am not planning a 2nd referendum with
political opponents or anyone else,” adding it would “further divide the
country when we should be trying to bring people back together.” Lidington
tweeted that he has made “plain” his opposition to a repeat vote and posted an
extract from a speech in which he said it would threaten faith in democracy.
Trade Secretary Liam Fox also ruled out a second referendum,
but said he would be willing to have lawmakers play a greater role in sifting
alternatives to May’s deal if it is unable to win enough votes in Parliament.
Indicative Votes
Some of his cabinet colleagues have been pushing for
"indicative votes" to gauge support. They argue that May’s deal will
be easier to accept once it is clear there is no majority for any other
available option. Fox said it hadn’t been discussed by the full cabinet “yet,”
but he “wouldn’t have a huge problem” with backing such a move.
“It wasn’t the government given an instruction in the
referendum, it was Parliament, they gave us an instruction and its time
Parliament carried it out,” he told BBC TV. “When you look at the options that
we have, we’ve got to recognize there are a limited number of real-world
options here.”
The opposition Labour Party said it will press for May’s
deal to face a vote in Parliament before Christmas and is still considering the
best time to submit a no-confidence motion against the government to enhance
its chances of winning a majority in the House of Commons.
“We’ve been assessing on a daily basis the time we would
achieve a successful outcome,” Rebecca Long-Bailey, the party’s business
spokesman, told Sky News. “What we want is an outcome rather than it just being
a bit of Parliamentary drama.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Thomas Penny in
London at tpenny@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Tim Ross
at tross54@bloomberg.net, Ross Larsen, Steve Geimann
©2018 Bloomberg L.P.
Brexit: where the hell do we go from here?
The Observer
Brexit
A week of brutal infighting at home and diplomatic stalemate
abroad has left Theresa May’s government deadlocked
Toby Helm and Michael Savage
Sat 15 Dec 2018 21.00 GMT Last modified on Sat 15 Dec 2018
23.35 GMT
It is never a good sign when MPs leap too quickly to their
feet to give their leaders a standing ovation. Soon after 9pm on Wednesday
evening in Committee Room 14 of the House of Commons, a group of loyalists got
up from their seats and burst, North Korean-style, into a mix of applause and
cheers.
What had triggered the outpouring of fake elation was an
announcement seconds earlier by Sir Graham Brady, chairman of the 1922
Committee of Tory backbenchers, that May had won a confidence vote among her
MPs. After the noise subsided, Brady revealed the figures. Two hundred Tory MPs
had confidence in her leadership but 117 did not. More than a third of her
parliamentary party had tried to oust Theresa May.
As they filed out, MPs privately ridiculed the stage-managed
celebrations and the idea that the prime minister was now stronger. One Tory MP
remarked to a colleague: “Takes me back to the 19 standing ovations for Duncan
Smith in 2003. Weeks later he was gone.”
Outside in the corridor, brief efforts were made by May’s
friends to project the victory as a turning point for the prime minister and
for Brexit.
Former cabinet minister Damian Green told journalists that
it was a “strong result”, adding that “those who have tried to bring down their
leader have lost”.
He urged them to practise what they preached on Brexit and
to respect the will of the electorate. “Now it is time for those MPs who lost
to accept the result of this democratic process and move on.”
Over his right shoulder, one of the failed assassins, Mark
Francois, deputy chair of the hardline Eurosceptic European Research Group, was
enthusiastically urging journalists to read the result in precisely the
opposite way, and realise that May had been fatally damaged.
“This is a
devastating result for the prime minister,” he said. “Having lost the support
of a third of her MPs, the question is what she does now.”
As every new act in the Brexit crisis plays out, the
political divisions and deadlock deepen. No Tory MP who tried to project
positivity on to Wednesday’s “victory” for May seemed to mean it. Asked “what
now?”, many stared into the distance or simply shook their heads and struggled
to muster any meaningful replies.
Earlier in the evening, after May had addressed her MPs
before the vote, and had pleaded for their support, the attorney general,
Geoffrey Cox, strode out of the room and said over and over again in his
booming voice that it had been a “strong prime ministerial performance, a
strong prime ministerial performance”.
He kept saying it all the way down the long committee
corridor until he turned a corner and went out of earshot. But nobody was taken
in.
Where there is optimism these days among Tories, it is
usually – and rightly – perceived as false. May had just been savaged inside
Committee Room 14 by many of her own backbenchers, and some thought she had
been on the brink of tears when she asked them to back her.
One Tory who resigned recently from her government said: “It
was awful, really. She was quite emotional. You have to feel for her. But she
had nothing to say that will change anything.”
After the result, everyone knew that just when the country
needed a united governing party to get behind its leader and prime minister,
they had the reverse – one that seemed intent on playing out its long-running
civil war to a very bloody end as the normal duties of governing were abandoned
amid the mayhem.
Before the confidence vote, tensions were running high: in
the Commons tea room a huge row broke out between Remainer Anna Soubry and
Brexiter Boris Johnson that onlookers described as one of the most ferocious
they had ever witnessed. “Where we are now is no good for anyone,” said another
Conservative MP. “We are back in the first circle of Dante’s hell – purgatory.”
With just over three months to go until the UK is due to leave
the EU, Theresa May’s government and party is more divided, and in multiple
different ways, than ever over how to achieve Brexit, and an increasing number
of senior Tories are questioning whether it should now happen at all.
Last weekend No 10 was still promising that a parliamentary
vote on May’s Brexit deal would take place on the following Tuesday and that
May hoped to win it, although all the omens were that the prime minister would
go down to a crushing defeat.
Asked on the BBC’s Today programme on Monday if the vote was
“definitely, 100%” going to happen, the environment secretary, Michael Gove,
replied: “Yes.” When pressed, he said: “The vote is going ahead.”
After discussions with the chief whip, Julian Smith, and
May’s aides, however, cabinet ministers were told by phone at short notice that
morning that there would be a conference call in which a delay would be
confirmed. For many Tory MPs the news that a vote was being pushed back was the
last straw and a further sign that the PM had simply lost control.
The pile of letters on Brady’s desk demanding a confidence
vote on May rose steadily on Monday to 48 – the threshold at which he had,
under party rules, to trigger a process that could have led to a full-blown
leadership contest.
When it reached the magic number, Brady called No 10 and was
put through to the prime minister, who was in the middle of a whistlestop tour
of EU capitals. She was “businesslike” in her approach when he delivered the
news, Brady said, and wanted the vote to happen as soon as possible.
At every turn May has tried to soldier on while forces at
home and in Europe have gathered increasingly to oppose her central proposals
on how to achieve Brexit. One senior Tory said that in her case resilience had
become “political blindness”.
Even before MPs had gathered for the ballot on their leader,
Downing Street sources were adamant that May had already resolved to carry on
if she won, even if the result was very close. She would not be forced out
voluntarily. That was not her way. But if she or anyone else thought she would
somehow be able to survive a vote of confidence and then use it to force the EU
to make more concessions, they were mistaken.
May returned to Brussels on Thursday to ask for
clarifications, and if possible legal changes, to reassure her MPs over the
Irish backstop, as many Tories had demanded she must. But she was rapidly
rebuffed as European leaders criticised her for lack of clarity in her new
demands and refused to budge over the substance. Pictures of May having a
stand-up row with the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, who
called the British requests “nebulous”, summed up how little success she was
having.
“It is hopeless, brick wall after brick wall,” said a former
Tory minister. “My worry is not just about the deal and the fact that she won’t
get it through and the EU won’t change it. It is about the country and the
economy. We can’t do anything because she just insists on pushing on with
something parliament will never agree to, so everything else we should be doing
doesn’t happen. The country is being deprived of a decent government.”
A statement on Sundaysigned by the chairs of six Commons
select committees raises concerns that the government is overlooking the
domestic agenda as Brexit dominates everything. On Friday it was revealed that
a new 10-year plan for the NHS and a long-awaited green paper on social care
were being delayed.
Government insiders say everything but Brexit is being
“wiped from the grid”. In their statement, the select committee chairs say that
“long-drawn-out arguments over Brexit and delays in reaching an agreement on
our future relationship with the EU are having a serious detrimental effect on
the conduct of wider domestic policy”.
They say that “MPs of all parties and ministers should be
addressing the most urgent challenges facing our country: safeguarding our NHS,
improving social care for the elderly; stepping up the fight against crime and
knife crime; sorting out our benefits system; improving our public transport;
and safeguarding the environment for future generations”.
More and more MPs want May to bring her deal to parliament
before Christmas rather than delay doing so until the new year. Labour is
urging her to hold the vote before parliament goes into recess this week.
Ahead of a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, desperate efforts are
being made to find a way out of the impasse, despite a growing pessimism at the
top of the Tory party. Another ex-minister said: “The problem now is that May
has been sent by her MPs who don’t like her Brexit deal back to Brussels to get
concessions, but Brussels has sent her back here, saying it has little to offer
and that her MPs are the problem. It is not easy to see how we break out of
this.”
The cabinet has divided into camps, with one group,
including work and pensions secretary Amber Rudd and Cabinet Office minister
David Lidington, believing a second referendum may now be the only way for May
to deliver her deal.
Another group on the pro-Brexit wing includes chief Treasury
secretary Liz Truss and the leader of the Commons, Andrea Leadsom, who are more
willing to entertain a no-deal outcome and strongly oppose a second referendum.
Meanwhile Gove and the home secretary, Sajid Javid, are keen to finesse some
form of soft Brexit, perhaps not dissimilar to a Norway-style agreement, that
would prevent a no-deal.
With so many different theories, work is also being done on
how to break the parliamentary deadlock. One plan is to allow MPs to vote on a
series of Brexit options, in an attempt to find where compromise could lie.
This idea has been floated by Damian Hinds, the education
secretary, and Karen Bradley, the Northern Ireland secretary. The prime
minister is said not to have warmed to the suggestion, believing it would lead
to “game-playing in parliament”. Over the past fortnight, May has turned to
former chief whip Gavin Williamson, now the defence secretary, in the hope that
he can help find a way to bring the 10 Democratic Unionist party MPs who prop
up May’s government back on board.
Insiders believe that if Williamson, as the architect of the
confidence and supply agreement with the DUP, can win them over, these MPs will
bring a huge number of Tory MPs back with them. Other ministers, however,
cannot see the DUP cooperating. “They want legal guarantees – and it is clear
that Brussels will not offer them,” said one.
With Labour and the entire country split too, what is going
on in Westminster is feeding a sense of national unease and crisis. So much so
that Church of England bishops are this weekend praying for “national unity and
courage, integrity and clarity for our politicians” amid the turmoil. May, who
will be in church herself on Sunday, will welcome any help she can get.
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário