Yahoo News Brexit weekly briefing: May digs in after week of turmoil
Welcome to the Guardian’s weekly Brexit briefing, bringing you the top stories of the week in Brexitland arranged in a way that might – with luck and a following wind – allow you to make some sense of them.
If you would like to receive the briefing as a weekly email, please sign up here. And you can catch up with our relaunched monthly Brexit Means … podcast right here.
Finally, producing the Guardian’s independent, in-depth journalism takes time and money. We do it because we believe our perspective matters and it may be yours, too. If you value our Brexit coverage, please become a Guardian supporter. Thank you.
Top stories
It’s always the way, isn’t it: you wait months for a piece of big Brexit news, and suddenly along come about 20 all at once. So last week Theresa May finally got a draft withdrawal deal through cabinet – then all hell broke loose.
The next day, a raft of pro-Brexit ministers resigned, including Dominic Raab, the second Brexit secretary to step down and accuse the government of caving in to the EU after, er, leading the negotiations in which the government caved in to the EU.
The 585-page deal (here’s a quick primer if you’re lost) pleased almost no one except (sort of) business, which welcomed it as at least something concrete to cling to and probably the least worst outcome that was realistically available.
Leavers slammed it as “vassal state stuff” (according to Boris Johnson, before he’d even seen it) that would leave Britain trapped in a customs union with the EU while being forced to obey the bloc’s rules on everything from taxation through environmental protection to working conditions. They began mounting a leadership challenge.
Remainers said the agreement was not in the national interest, way worse than staying in the EU, and – in the words of Jo Johnson, Boris Johnson’s brother – nothing remotely like “a Brexit that matches the fantastical promises of the false prospectus that was made”.
May pledged to see it through regardless, warning that the choice was between this deal, no deal or no Brexit. She won a reprieve when the environment secretary (and leading Brexiter) Michael Gove said he would not quit the cabinet.
Five pro-Brexit ministers – including Gove, the leader of the Commons, Andrea Leadsom, and the international trade secretary, Liam Fox – are thinking about pushing her to renegotiate the agreement, in particular over the Irish backstop (though they may get no further than thinking).
Meanwhile, EU leaders have warned that the deal is “the best we can do” and – give or take the odd minor tweak – is pretty much take-it-or-leave-it (indeed some member states feel the EU may already have made too many concessions).
What next?
Who knows? The prime minister is digging in for what she clearly hopes will be the long haul, defying the rebels (whose mutiny appears to be running out of steam) and stressing the positive aspects of her deal, including immigration control. Toppling her would not get Brexiters what they want, she said.
But with the Labour frontbench saying the agreement does not look likely to pass the party’s tests for a “jobs-first Brexit”, it is hard at present (things may change) to see how the prime minister can hope to get the withdrawal deal through parliament.
Talks continue in Brussels – where May will head this week – on the political declaration on the future EU-UK trade agreement. “Substantial work” is still needed on this before an outline can be included in the withdrawal agreement; to Brexiters’ further fury, it looks likely to be based on some kind of common customs area.
Assuming events in the UK do not preclude it, an emergency EU summit is scheduled on Sunday 25 November to seal the deal. But no sensible person would want to take a bet on the final outcome beyond that: here are six possible scenarios.
Already, the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, has raised the prospect of the transition period being extended beyond December 2020, possibly until 2022 – a suggestion the business secretary, Greg Clark, appeared to welcome.
It’s all still to play for, folks.
Best of the rest
Madrid threatens to reject May’s Brexit deal over Gibraltar.
CBI president endorses Theresa May’s draft Brexit deal.
Jo Johnson backs bid to force Treasury to reveal no-Brexit forecasts.
Buoyant Labour plans strategy to make a no-deal impossible.
UK running out of food warehouse space as no-deal Brexit fears rise.
DUP and Northern Irish businesses at odds over May’s Brexit deal.
Ireland to remain open door to UK for EU citizens post-Brexit.
Pound tumbles as UK markets suffer Brexit deal volatility.
Retail sales slide as shoppers tighten purse strings before Brexit.
How the draft Brexit agreement emerged from the “tunnel”.
Government to publish Brexit legal advice after Commons defeat.
EU ratchets up pressure on UK with no-deal visa proposal.
Top comment
The Guardian’s editorial on the deal (and the resignations that followed it) pulled few punches:
For the Tory party’s rightwing nationalist Brexiters, Brexit is about parading their infatuation with a phoney ideal, not with the art of the possible. They have never, ever, had a practical proposal to make. Faced with realities, they resign and walk away, then denouncing others for betraying these wrongheaded and unachievable goals … If Mrs May succeeds in her immediate task of holding on as Tory leader, the stage is set for a major parliamentary showdown in early December. Right now, she does not have a majority for her Brexit package in parliament or the country. All options, including a second referendum, are inescapably on the table. The task of rescuing Britain from the Brexiters’ delusions has barely started yet.
Suzanne Moore argues in the Guardian that May now personifies the UK: lonely, exhausted, her power ebbing away:
How does she continue to get up in the mornings and face this? Neither power nor money seem to motivate her. Not even ideology. It must be duty. But to whom? … I am amazed by her tenacity but her refusal to display any emotion in public also conveys a form of madness. … This is a collective breakdown of English identity. We are in a period of mass delusion. May is pushing something that makes no one happy but at least her hollowed-out pragmatism is vaguely more in touch with reality than the plotters. She is trying to deliver something she doesn’t believe in because she knows it is something impossible. Theresa May is not a lion leading donkeys. She is just an extremely tired donkey surrounded by reptiles. This is called pragmatism but it is in fact lunacy. Let her rest.
Top Tweet
The indefatigable Scientists for EU on May’s claim that her Brexit deal will stop EU citizens “jumping the queue”:
This is utterly disingenuous.
EU citizens don't "jump the queue" over engineers/scientists from India, Australia.
Labs & companies identify the talent they want. Then if the individuals are from outside the EU *our own government* puts up the barriers.https://t.co/fFyVgnMH0I— Scientists for EU (@Scientists4EU) November 19, 2018
