Theresa May has started the final push to win Cabinet and Tory party support for her Brexit plans after British and EU officials agreed the draft text of a deal.
In a determined bid to hold her government together, the Prime Minister called in senior ministers for individual consultations at Downing Street ahead of an emergency Cabinet meeting on Wednesday.
But former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith warned that the PM’s days were “almost certainly” numbered if she went ahead with any deal that treated Northern Ireland differently from the rest of the UK.
He urged Cabinet ministers to find their ‘spine’ as they read the details fo the proposals overnight.
The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), whose 10 MPs prop up May’s minority government, also signalled it may not support the plans.
Ministers were set to be handed the full detailed proposals on the shape of the 500-page legal ‘Withdrawal Agreement’ and a future partnership that will govern the UK’s exit from the 28-nation bloc next March.
May is expected to directly appeal to several senior Brexiteers in her top team to support the proposals, arguing that the UK has won key guarantees on issues such as Northern Ireland and future customs and regulation ties to the EU.
But she still faced the risk of one or more high profile resignations if ministers felt that the deal failed to meet their concerns that Britain would be trapped indefinitely within the orbit of the EU’s rules.
Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt and International Trade Secretary Liam Fox were among the first expected to be called in.
Allies of May fear that if Raab were to quit, his walkout would spark a mass resignation of colleagues including Penny Mordaunt and Esther McVey.
Government sources confirmed that Wednesday night would be the final deadline to sign off a deal in time to trigger a special EU summit later this month.
A No.10 spokesman said: “Cabinet will meet at 2pm tomorrow to consider the draft agreement the negotiating teams have reached in Brussels, and to decide on next steps.
“Cabinet Ministers have been invited to read documentation ahead of that meeting.”
Irish broadcaster RTE broke the news that the text had been agreed, with a compromise hammered out to keep open the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland should trade talks fail in the future.
May’s proposal to keep all of the UK in a customs partnership with the EU appeared to have been accepted by Brussels, with the caveat that an annex to the agreement could include regulatory differences between Northern Ireland and Britain.
Even if the Cabinet can be kept on board, the possibility of any regulatory border in the Irish Sea would be difficult to accept for the DUP, whose 10 MPs currently prop up the Tory government.
May needs to also to win the support of her Tory backbenches to have a hope of securing Parliamentary approval for the final deal, with a Commons vote expected some time in December.
The 80-strong backbench European Research Group (ERG) of Brexiteers, whose support is crucial in any Parliamentary vote, made clear it was unlikely to back the deal.
Asked if the Government’s days were numbered, Duncan Smith told reporters: ”If this [deal] is the case, the answer is almost certainly yes. Because they are in real trouble if they bring back something that is unacceptable.
“And if this is the case, the Government puts itself in an impossible position because they will be trying to promote something which they themselves said they would never promote.
“How can you ask the party to vote for something which you yourself as Prime Minister and the Cabinet said they would never ever allow?”
““As Mrs Thatcher once said to a friend of mine, unfairly I thought, but it may apply to the Cabinet: ‘Your spine doesn’t yet meet your brain’.””
- Iain Duncan Smith
Duncan Smith said “the question will be asked” as to whether the Tories needed a new leader. He added his message to the PM was “your party wants to get on with this but it does not want to sacrifice Northern Ireland”.
“As Mrs Thatcher once said to a friend of mine, unfairly I thought, but it may apply to the Cabinet: ‘Your spine doesn’t yet meet your brain’.”
Mark Francois, deputy chairman of the backbench ERG group, added: “What members of the Cabinet do over the next 24 hours is the most important thing that they do in their lives. They have an opportunity to stand up for their country and defend its destiny.”
Former Brexit Secretary David Davis told HuffPost that if the deal failed key tests of UK sovereignty then the Cabinet “should reject it”.
“It does sound as if they’ve capitulated, or tried to dress up what is a capitulation.
“It has to pass all the tests. If we continue to be in a customs union it has to be very time limited and very short, at least a year before the next general election.
“The £39bn we are handing over must be absolutely conditional on us being certain we can exit from this arrangement. We must be free to strike unfettered trade deals with other parts of the world.
“If the deal does not look like it has met any of these tests, the Cabinet should reject it.”
One pro-Remain former minister, Jonathan Djanogly, ridiculed the Brexiteer backlash.
But Former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson also urged the Cabinet to reject plans that would mean the UK was “doomed to remain in the customs union and under Brussels’ regulatory control”.
He told the BBC: “It’s vassal state stuff as for the first time in 1,000 years this parliament will not have a say over the laws that govern this country. It is utterly unacceptable to anybody who believes in democracy.”
DUP’s Westminster leader Nigel Dodds said that “it’s difficult to see” how May could get a deal that didn’t deliver “a true Brexit” through the House of Commons.
“Let’s see what the deal actually says, but it looks very, very clear that the backstop as proposed does entail special provisions which go much deeper than a UK-wide customs provision for Northern Ireland, and we have made it clear that’s unacceptable,” he said.
However, both Dublin and Brussels had a note of caution. A spokesperson for Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator on Brexit, said that while progress had been made ‘we are not there yet’ in terms of final agreement.
Chief whip Julian Smith said negotiators had been up until 5am thrashing out the final details of the deal.
He told HuffPost he “couldn’t be more confident” of getting the deal through parliament, but when asked if he could 100% count on the support of the DUP, he refused to say yes, simply adding: “It is my job to get the deal through parliament, and I couldn’t be more confident.”
A senior Brexiteer told HuffPost the mood was one of “nervousness that it will be as awful as we fear”, adding: “We all so want to be able to support something which really will deliver Brexit, but we aren’t hopeful.”
Irish PM Leo Varadkar will convene his own Cabinet meeting on Wednesday to discuss the proposals.
Shadow Brexit Secretary Keir Starmer said: “Given the shambolic nature of the negotiations this is unlikely to be a good deal.”