Theresa May is often at her best when her back is to the wall. Last month’s party conference speech confounded her critics, and yesterday in the Commons and this morning on LBC she sounded more fluent and personable than she has in a long time. When she drops the robotic answers (as she did about her insulin supply from Denmark to treat her diabetes), she can come across as the warm human being those closest to her recognise. As for her mastery of the detail, civil servants will tell you there are few politicians who can read and digest a brief as well as she can.
This morning, the PM’s radio appearance was meant to be part of a PR fightback to sell her deal. As I reported last night, there is also a move to reassure wavering MPs that she can get an even better deal, pointing out there is just an ‘outline’ political declaration with the EU, something she wants to improve. With the DUP confidence and supply deal still technically alive (see this tweet), though looking on life-support, in her press conference she last night said how much she shared ‘concerns’ about the Northern Irish backstop plan (her eyes flicked down to a script even during the Q&A). This morning she tried to offer a fresh olive branch about those concerns: “We are looking at those…what can we do in the UK to help reassure the people of Northern Ireland.”
May also made plain that she would not adopt International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt’s idea of a free vote on the Brexit plan when it comes to the Commons next month. “There is Cabinet collective responsibility…government policy is government policy,” she said. And it’s that ‘meaningful vote’ that is still a huge hurdle for May. Her position has been weakened overnight by a report by the Commons Procedure Committee which rejects a cunning plan to change the rules and bounce MPs into voting on the deal before any amendments were taken. The Committee recommended that “the House should not depart from its usual practice of voting on amendments before voting on the main motion”. That means MPs’ amendments (on an extension of the transition or Article 50, on a customs union, on a meaningful vote, or just sending her back to the negotiating table) would have to be voted on first.
May denied demands from callers to LBC to quit and make way for Jacob Rees-Mogg, and denied she was the Neville Chamberlain of Brexit. But even as she was speaking, there was a flurry of fresh political electricity coming into my smartphone. One source told me exclusively that all Government whips had been suddenly told to cancel Friday constituency engagements and to convene in Westminster. Does that mean they are simply being briefed on the PM’s next moves on the reshuffle…or does it mean a leadership vote has been triggered? Chief Whip Julian Smith (pictured above) has a lot on his plate, alright. He said yesterday: “The prime minister will not be bullied and won’t change course.” Let’s see if he’s right. Or whether in years to come, Tory Brexiteers will be singing ‘Remember, Remember, the 16th of November, gunpowder, treason and plot’.
So, just how close is May to a vote of no confidence by her party? Sir Graham Brady, the Sphynx-like chairman of the backbench 1922 Committee, knows the real answer. If the crucial threshold of the required 48 letters from MPs has been reached (and that whips emergency meeting may mean it has), he has an obligation to inform the PM and the executive of the ’22. The rules are opaque but it’s my understanding that he then has to arrange ‘as soon as practicable’ a vote in the House. If the 48 target has already been reached, and some Brexiteers claim it has, then we are looking at Monday for the actual vote in Committee Room 14.
And the numbers? Well, as of this morning, the total number of MPs who have publicly declared they have submitted letters is 19 (Ben Bradley added to the 17 total we knew about last night, telling the Guardian he did it a while back, John Whittingdale told Today he had too). That’s on the face of it 29 short of the magic number needed (though it is more than enough to ensure her Brexit deal isn’t passed). Of course, those 19 are only the new names we know of, and it’s unclear whether there were 30 letters already in Brady’s safe in his Commons office.
Jacob Rees-Mogg finally stuck the knife into the PM yesterday, handing in his own letter and then staging a rather surreal press conference that involved him saying ‘coup is the wrong word’. Rory Stewart cited Disraeli’s lovely line that ‘There is scarcely a less dignified entity than a patrician in a panic’. Foreign Office Minister Sir Alan Duncan was no less withering: “On one level it is absurdly comical, on another it is deeply serious.” Home Office minister Victoria Atkins told me she’d seen Rees-Mogg on the TV in her Whitehall office and was so furious she decided to go straight onto BBC News Channel and put the case defending the PM. It’s those small acts of loyalty that many colleagues remember in the long run (she’s the youngest minister in the Government but tipped for big things).
The vitriol among loyalists against the Moggsters is very strong indeed. One backbencher said this of Steve Baker (Moggy’s key ally who revealed yesterday he’d handed in a letter last month): “He writes letters to MPs addressing us as ‘Dear Brother In Christ’, he talks about the moral high ground. And then he just shits on the Prime Minister like this.” Given the need to get the Brexit deal done, some in No.10 will still be praying the rebels lack the numbers. But there are plenty around her who want a vote of confidence to show just what a rump the plotters really are.
Michael Gove left his home this morning, still getting into a ministerial car. He didn’t issue the usual bromides of support for the PM. His future in the government may depend on a further chat with her today, but it is not now denied that he rejected the offer of the Brexit Secretary job because it didn’t satisfy his conditions. Demanding that May’s chief civil servant no longer has a role in the negotiations seems extraordinary, as does turning down such a big job. Yet we should remember that the extraordinary is ordinary these days. Jeremy Hunt refused to move from Health in a reshuffle at the start of the year, I recall, and the PM’s kept on ploughing on.
On LBC she refused to deny the stories about the offer to Gove, apart from saying new appointments would be made ‘over the course of the next day’. The time for the convention that the Brexit Secretary has to be a Brexiteer may be over (the ERG hardliners can’t be calmed it seems), and as I suggested yesterday maybe David Lidington would smoothly fit into the role. The role itself could be phased out anyway after next March (again, remember David Davis himself suggested he could step aside once we formally quit the EU).
The question of whether to Remain Or Leave is now not about the EU, it’s about the Cabinet itself. Gove told the Cabinet meeting on Tuesday he would accept the deal ‘with heavy heart’, but fellow ministers say he still accepted it. He could arguably say he’d tried and failed to persuade the PM to renegotiate and was now quitting as a matter of honour. If he did go, then the intellectual heft of the Leavers around the Cabinet table would go with him. Then again, just imagine if he did quit and May still calmly carried on. She would have survived the resignations of Johnson, Davis, Raab and Gove and all the talk of them being ‘big beasts’ would look pretty hollow indeed if she then stayed in post. The very latest this morning was that Gove had folded, with the Times’ Sam Coates tweeting a pal saying: “Michael is staying at Defra. He thinks it is important to continue working with Cabinet colleagues to ensure the best outcome for the country.”
Watch the sign language interpreter on BBC News yesterday effortlessly sum up the nation’s reaction to the Tory chaos yesterday. No wonder she went viral.
Rees-Mogg yesterday namechecked Dominic Raab as one of a range of talents who could lead the Tory party. In the Telegraph, Camilla Tominey has an intruiging line from a pal of David Davis’s that he “appreciates the Conservatives must have an appeal to younger voters if they are to win the next election” and that his long-time ally Raab could be the fresh face needed. I’ve heard a different scenario: DD as caretaker PM, followed by Raab in 2022.
The Telegraph and Sun both have excellent reports on Raab’s departure. He apparently told the Chief Whip within minutes of the end of Cabinet that his position was very difficult and was told to sleep on it (this the Chief’s modus operandus btw, he did it with DD and Tracey Crouch). But when Raab woke up yesterday morning his mind had been made up. What angered him was a last minute change to the Brexit deal, particularly the claim that both the UK and EU would “build on the single customs territory” as part of the future relationship. That’s the line that leapt out on Tuesday night for many Brexiteers, the idea that a permanent customs link was being baked into the agreement.
In one TV interview, Raab attacked the ‘predatory’ move by the EU, claiming it “presents a very real threat to the integrity of the United Kingdom”, adding he could not support “an indefinite backstop arrangement, where the EU holds a veto over our ability to exit”. Yet it was Scottish Secretary David Mundell who then accused Raab of being a ‘carpet bagger’ on the issue of the Union. “Only a couple of years ago Dominic Raab was proposing to introduce a bill of rights into Scotland which would have overridden the Scottish legal system and devolution,” he told ITV Borders. “So I’m not impressed by his latter-day commitment to the Union. I’m sure that this is more about manoeuvring and leadership.”
One of the PM’s most human moments yesterday (and it provided the photo on many newspaper front pages) came after she picked me for a question in her press conference, only to then realise I was not the FT’s George Parker. “I’ve done it again! Anybody who thinks I’ve got George Parker on my mind…” As I pointed out, she could be forgiven because there are a lot of balding white blokes in the Lobby who look like gentleman George. Watch the clip HERE.
Once the laughs were out of the way, I asked the PM whether she would resign or respect the will of Parliament if the Commons voted by a majority for a People’s Vote, a referendum on her final Brexit deal. Her reply initially sounded like she’d resign: “As far as I’m concerned, there will not be a second referendum”. Yet when I pushed her further, she sounded like she wouldn’t quit, saying only MPs would be asking if the deal delivered for their constituents.
If the PM wants to say as PM, there’s a growing possibility that it will only be if she allows a People’s vote. Labour’s stance has hardened significantly in the past few days, with Jeremy Corbyn writing to all members yesterday to explicitly say “we will support all options remaining on the table, including campaigning for a public vote”. Deputy leader Tom Watson has told The House magazine a new referendum was “more likely given the weakness of Theresa May’s position”. And John McDonnell told the Today programme that Labour MPs calling for such a vote were “reflecting Labour Party policy”. I’m told that there are 20 Tory backbenchers, and possibly a further 10 ministers, who are prepared to back a referendum. That would be enough to cancel out Labour rebels. The obstacles are still high, but for the very first time I believe it could actually now happen.
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