Theresa May’s game of Brexit ‘whack-a-mole’, where fresh problems pop up just after others have been hammered down, continues. The PM phoned Spanish PM Pedro Sanchez last night after he warned the EU-UK deal’s provisions on Gibraltar were unacceptable. Given the EU27 have stressed the Withdrawal Agreement is done and dusted and cannot be reopened, Madrid’s concerns will have to be addressed through some clever new language in the ‘political declaration’.
But the plain fact is that Spain has no veto over the Withdrawal Agreement (an irony not lost on Brexiteers). May has scored a ‘win’ on Gibraltar’s status, as underlined by her phrasing in PMQs that her Brexit deal “works for the whole UK family”. She has similarly scored wins on fishing rights, which is why the French and Spanish are also pushing back in recent days. Michael Gove finally came out swinging for the deal in the Commons, at least its fisheries elements, yesterday. “The Prime Minister and the negotiating team have absolutely not bent or buckled, which is why the European Commission’s own negotiator has had to attempt to sweeten the pill”.
The PM paid a flying visit to Brussels to meet Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker last night. She will travel out again on Saturday to nail down the last bits of the deal before Sunday’s summit. No one in No.10 is panicked and Health Secretary Matt Hancock told Today ‘good progress’ had been made with Juncker. “We all know EU negotiations always come down to the last minute,” he said. And just as Spain and France may be placated by fresh bolt-ons to the political declaration, the Mail reports that British Cabinet Brexiteers’ doubts look like being assuaged by new appendices or annexes to the document. The final paragraphs, dots and commas may be pinned down only at the eleventh hour.
Meanwhile this morning, life beyond Brexit goes on. The PM is due to make a visit with Hancock to push the £3.5bn plan to ease social care pressure on hospitals. The big story that may dominate is the Intelligence and Security Committee’s report on lessons learned from the 2017 terror attacks in Manchester, Westminster, London Bridge, Finsbury Park and Parsons Green.
Amber Rudd’s candid admission yesterday morning that “the House of Commons will stop no deal” certainly set the cat among the pigeons. Keir Starmer swiftly tweeted “I hope the rest of the Cabinet was listening and will finally drop the reckless no deal rhetoric”. And hours later in PMQs, Theresa May seemed to do just that. She said the alternatives to her deal were either “more uncertainty and more division, or it could risk no Brexit at all”. It sounded like the threat of a second referendum or even a general election.
Rather confusingly, the PM rapidly undermined her own ‘no Brexit’ threat, after she gave Esther McVey “an assurance that the UK will leave the EU on March 29, 2019”. But the main point for No.10 is what you could call BrexitBerg’s Uncertainty Principle: if MPs don’t vote for May’s plan, they cannot predict what the hell will happen next. On ITV’s Peston last night, Chancellor Philip Hammond stuck to the same script, saying “if this deal is rejected, we’re in unknown territory”.
Maybe the real reason that ‘no deal’ warnings have been gently ditched is because May has seen increasing evidence of the nightmare scenario. The Telegraph has a leak of this week’s Cabinet which reveals that Health Secretary Matt Hancock said his Permanent Secretary had warned the Government could not guarantee patients would get the medicine they need in the event of a no-deal outcome. Business Secretary Greg Clark painted a “blunt and lurid picture” of a no deal Brexit too, warning it would “destroy” the Tory party’s reputation of economic competence for a generation.
The leaks also show that plenty of Cabinet ministers had concerns about the need to improve the UK-EU political declaration, but clearly not strong enough for any of them to quit. Jeremy Hunt did warn of ‘the Turkey trap’, saying a temporary customs union could become permanent just as Turkey’s EU accession application had lasted 31 years. Hunt famously blundered by making his EU-SSR comparison at the party conference. Yesterday, the European Health Commissioner tweeted a jibe that Jacob Rees-Mogg and pals looked like the 1980s Soviet foreign ministry. Meanwhile, the king of ‘deal or no deal’, Noel Edmonds himself, is back on our screens tonight as the latest I’m A Celebrity camp mate. Read this Vice piece from earlier this year on why he’s to blame for Brexit. No, really.
Labour’s John McDonnell had quite a startling claim at his speech yesterday morning, declaring the Queen has a “duty” to offer Jeremy Corbyn the chance to become prime minister if Theresa May’s Brexit deal is voted down. McDonnell talked of “constitutional.. custom and practice”, even though everyone assumes the Fixed Term Parliaments Act sets out very strict conditions under which a general election can be called. Corbyn’s spokesman later suggested the FTPA was only about elections, but was ‘silent’ on the situation of a minority Government losing its confidence-and-supply deal.
Politically, Labour is just pressing on the bruise of deteriorating DUP-Tory relations. Arlene Foster yesterday confirmed what No.10 has been saying despite this week’s Budget abstentions, that the two parties’ agreement was “still very much in existence”. Foster also said the arrangement is “not just about money” but also “making sure the union is secure”. Last night, DUP Westminster leader Nigel Dodds was asked if rejecting the Brexit deal would indeed lead to a general election. “I think that the Conservative Party and others realise the implications of all of that and I don’t think that we need to get into that territory,” he said. That sounded like a man who knows the Tories fear an election more than the DUP.
The most interesting issue is whether Labour would in any way throw May a lifeline in a second ‘meaningful vote’ (assuming the first is lost) if she moves towards the party’s position on Brexit. McDonnell (he’s everywhere) told Newsnight: “We couldn’t support the deal as it now stands, no. We’ll see what come back at the weekend and consider that in detail.” That was seen by some as a hint of movement, but I didn’t detect any willingness to budge from Labour’s ‘six tests’. McDonnell did talk about putting national interest before party interest. Yet remember that for many Corbyn supporters who now dominate the party membership (as well as key Corbyn allies), any vote ‘for’ a Tory government is not how Opposition works.
Even if the PM somehow opted for ‘a customs union’, that would probably require an extension to Article 50 to give time to negotiate it. Both the customs move and any delay to Exit Day would split the Tory party. I’m told May simply won’t countenance any extension. There’s lots of chatter in Westminster about both May and Corbyn somehow edging closer together in a ‘second meaningful vote’, should the first one fail. But so far I can’t see how that would work.
Watch Immigration minister Caroline Nokes give Yvette Cooper the Death Stare as the pair clash over Home Office failures to check whether asylum seeker families were living in rat-infested accommodation.
We splash our front page today on a powerful, personal account of a homophobic attack suffered by our entertainment editor Matt Bagwell. With Stonewall revealing that LGBT+ hate crime has increased in the past four years, it’s a stark reminder that the UK is nowhere near the tolerant, liberal nation that many in Westminster think it is. One in five LGBT+ people reported being verbally or physically attacked due to their sexuality or gender identity in the previous 12 months. Huge strides have been made in changing in-grained cultural prejudices, but there’s clearly still a long, long way to go.
Another ‘away from Brexit’ issue resurfaces again today. Rising rents, welfare cuts and a dire lack of accommodation have led to a 4% rise in homelessness, a new report by Shelter has found. The charity, which has actually been pretty constructive in its approach to government policy in recent years, points out its combination of rough sleeper stats and homelessness figures are likely to be severe underestimates too. Theresa May vowed last year to make it the ‘personal mission’ of her premiership to tackle the housing crisis, and today’s figures show why this is a political problem. Homelessness is spreading beyond the big cities and into towns like Luton, Brighton & Hove, Slough, Dartford, Milton Keynes, Harlow, Watford, Epsom, Reading, Broxbourne, Basildon, Peterborough and Coventry. Lots of marginal seats in that list.
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