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Jacob Rees-Mogg accuses Theresa May of 'making active choices' to prevent Brexit

Britain’s Conservative Party MP Jacob Rees-Mogg walks in Westminster in London, Britain, April 3, 2019. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls/Files
Britain’s Conservative Party MP Jacob Rees-Mogg walks in Westminster in London, Britain, April 3, 2019. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls/Files

Jacob Rees-Mogg has said that Theresa May has made ‘active choices’ to prevent Brexit.

The North East Somerset MP says that the Prime Minister’s collusion with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn as the pair try to compromise a Brexit deal “risks giving a credibility to Mr Corbyn and undermining the general thrust of the Conservative argument that he is a Marxist and he would be dangerous to this nation’s interests.”

He added that there was an “irony, at the very minimum, of saying one week that one thinks Mr Corbyn is dangerous and unfit for office and the next week deciding to cohabit with him”.

He told Sky News: “The Prime Minister could have taken us out on March 29. It was the Prime Minister who asked for an extension, it was the Prime Minister who changed the date by prerogative power from March 29 to April 12.

“This all rests with her and upon her shoulders. The Prime Minister Mrs May has made active choices to stop us leaving and she deserves to be held to account for that.

“People ought to know the truth of the position, rather than trying to blame everybody else, blaming recalcitrant MPs and other Conservatives.


Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May and her husband Philip leave church, as Brexit turmoil continues, near High Wycombe, Britain April 7, 2019. REUTERS/Simon Dawson
Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May and her husband Philip leave church, as Brexit turmoil continues, near High Wycombe, Britain April 7, 2019. REUTERS/Simon Dawson

“If the Prime Minister had done what she said in the first place and had stuck to the law, as set out in two Acts, we would have left the European Union by now.”

Theresa May warned this morning that Brexit could “slip through our fingers” unless the Tories worked with Labour to reach a compromise.

The PM claimed that she had done “everything in my power” to persuade both Tory and DUP MPs to back her deal, but admitted that after three humiliating rejections “there is no sign it can be passed in the near future”.

She said: “Because Parliament has made clear it will stop the UK leaving without a deal, we now have a stark choice: leave the European Union with a deal or do not leave at all,” she said.

“My answer to that is clear: we must deliver Brexit and to do so we must agree a deal. If we cannot secure a majority among Conservative and DUP MPs we have no choice but to reach out across the House of Commons.

“The referendum was not fought along party lines and people I speak to on the doorstep tell me they expect their politicians to work together when the national interest demands it.

“The fact is that on Brexit there are areas where the two main parties agree: we both want to end free movement, we both want to leave with a good deal, and we both want to protect jobs.

“That is the basis for a compromise that can win a majority in Parliament and winning that majority is the only way to deliver Brexit.”