May 'shares concerns' deal could lock UK into backstop agreement

Theresa May has admitted she “shares concerns” that the UK could be locked into the backstop arrangement, amid testy exchanges in the House of Commons following the departure of two cabinet ministers.

May insisted the UK had clinched a bespoke Brexit deal that was better than any other model, but conceded that “difficult choices” had been made, which triggered the exit of cabinet ministers Dominic Raab and Esther McVey.

In a plea to MPs to back her, she said that delivering the deal was “in the national interest” and that any move by MPs to block it would take negotiators “back to square one, more uncertainty, more division”.

“The British people want us to get this done,” May said. “To get on with addressing the other issues they care about. The choice is clear: we can choose to leave with no deal, we can risk no Brexit at all, or we can choose to unite and support the best deal that can be negotiated.”

However, in the exchanges with Eurosceptic Tories, May conceded the UK had not got everything it had wanted.

Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader, said he had serious misgivings about the backstop, saying the UK maintained the “sovereign right to leave bodies like Nato and the UN” but would not have that right over the backstop arrangement.

In her reply to Smith, May accepted that coming out of the backstop would require mutual consent. “I won’t make any bones about that,” she said.

“Across the house there are concerns in relations to the backstop and I share some of their concerns, these have not been easy decisions to take. It has been necessary and would be necessary in any deal we were striking.”

The statement came amid feverish speculation in Westminster that a no-confidence vote in the prime minister was imminent.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, who chairs the European Research Group contingent of pro-Brexit Tory MPs, hinted he could send a letter to Graham Brady, who chairs the 1922 Committee of backbench Conservatives. Brady must receive 48 letters from Tory MPs to trigger a leadership contest.

No-confidence proceedings

Forty-eight Conservative MPs would need to back a no-confidence vote in Theresa May to trigger a leadership contest, according to party rules.

There are two ways a contest can be triggered, most obviously if the leader of the party resigns. If they do not, 15% of Conservative MPs must write to the chairman of the 1922 Committee of backbench Tories. With the party’s current crop of 317 MPs, 48 would be needed.

After David Cameron announced his resignation, five Tory MPs stood for the leadership. Unlike Labour party rules, under which candidates go to a ballot of members as long as they have the support of 15% of the party’s MPs, Conservative candidates are whittled down to a final two before party members have their say.

The ballot is based on “one member, one vote”, but in 2016 one of the final two candidates, Andrea Leadsom, withdrew from the race after a damaging interview with the Times about the fact that May did not have children. Her withdrawal meant May was made party leader without having been elected by members.

Rees-Mogg said that what the prime minister had said and what she had done “no longer match” and added: “Should I not write to [Brady] my right honourable friend the member for Altrincham and Sale West?”

In her opening statement, May told the Commons she respected the views of the two cabinet ministers who quit on Thursday morning and said they had differences of opinion. Two other key cabinet Brexiters, Penny Mordaunt and Andrea Leadsom, who had been said to have serious reservations, were sitting beside her on the government benches.

“Delivering Brexit involves difficult choices for all of us,” May said. “We do not agree on all of those choices but I respect their views.”

May said her deal “delivers in ways that many said simply could not be done” and said it was preferable to any off-the-shelf model.

She said: “We were told that we had a binary choice between the model of Norway or the model of Canada, that we could not have a bespoke deal. But the outline political declaration sets out an arrangement that is better for our country than both of these.”

In the speech, May defended her “insurance policy” of a backstop to prevent a hard border in Northern Ireland.

“I do not pretend that this has been a comfortable process, or that either we or the EU are entirely happy with all of the arrangements that have been included within it. But of course this is the case,” she said. “This is an arrangement that we have both said we never want to have to use.

“But while some people might pretend otherwise, there is no deal which delivers the Brexit deal the British people voted for which does not involve this insurance policy.”

In a pointed dig at the opponents on her own benches, who had floated alternative deals, May said none of those would avoid the need for a backstop. “Not Canada plus plus plus, not Norway for Now, not our own white paper,” she said. “The EU will not negotiate any future partnership without it.”

She said the EU had made “a number of concessions towards our position” on the backstop to ensure that the Northern Ireland-only element was dropped and that there could be an option to extend the transition period as an alternative to the backstop.

“There is also a mechanism by which the backstop can be terminated,” she said, without mentioning that the UK had conceded that exit could not be the unilateral decision of the British government.

In a veiled reference to the former foreign secretary Boris Johnson, May said some had recommended “an entirely irresponsible course of action” that she should “simply rip up the UK’s commitment to a backstop”.

“Doing so would have made it impossible to deliver a withdrawal agreement,” May said. “It would have meant reneging on a promise made to the people of Northern Ireland during the referendum campaign and afterwards that under no circumstances would Brexit lead to a return to the borders of the past.”

MPs on all sides expressed some deep reservations. Among one of the most troubling interventions for May was the scathing verdict of Nigel Dodds, whose Democratic Unionist party she relies upon for a parliamentary majority.

Dodds said he could “take the prime minister through the list of promises and pledges she made to this house and to us privately about the future of Northern Ireland”.

He added: “But I fear it would be a waste of time since she clearly doesn’t listen.”

Praising the ministers who had resigned, Dodds said: “The choice is now clear: we stand up for the whole of the United Kingdom, the integrity of the United Kingdom, or we vote for a vassal state with the break-up of the United Kingdom.”

Two former cabinet ministers, Amber Rudd and Nicky Morgan, were among a handful who praised the deal as the best on offer. But Justine Greening, the Tory former education secretary, called on May to hold a second referendum, saying the process was in deadlock: “If it was good enough before, why isn’t it good enough now?”

The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, said the deal was “a huge and damaging failure” and that his party would not back it.

“After two years of bungled negotiations the government has produced a botched deal that breaches the prime minister’s own red lines and does not meet our six tests,” he said. “The government is in chaos. Their deal risks leaving the country in an indefinite halfway house without a real say.”

He cited the departure of Raab as Brexit secretary over a deal he had negotiated. Corbyn said: “What faith does that give anyone else, in this place or in the country?”

He called for the government’s legal advice on the risks of a no-deal Brexit to be published, saying: “We cannot put to parliament this half-baked deal that both the Brexit secretary and his predecessor had rejected. No deal is not a serious option and the government has not prepared for it.”

Corbyn specifically criticised the restrictions on state aid, which had been “hard-wired” into the arbitration mechanism on the backstop, but said no similar guarantees had been made on workers’ rights.

“This is not the deal the country was promised and parliament cannot, and I believe will not, accept a false choice between this bad deal and no deal.”