May races against time to strike Brexit deal with EU as Tory Eurosceptics warn she must NOT keep Britain in customs union beyond 2022
- Theresa May racing against time to strike Brexit deal with EU before key summit
- The PM is due to publish updated proposals on the ‘backstop’ for the Irish border
- She is also battling to save her Chequers proposals for future trade relations
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The PM (pictured at church in her Maidenhead constituency yesterday) is facing a torrid week with Brexit negotiations reaching a critical stage
Theresa May is racing against time to strike a Brexit deal with the EU today as Tory Eurosceptics warned she must not agree to keep the UK in the customs union beyond 2022.
The Prime Minister is facing a torrid week with negotiations reaching a critical stage in the run-up to a make-or-break summit in Brussels next week.
She is battling on a series of fronts as the EU seeks to force her into concessions over the divorce arrangements for the Irish border – while Conservative Brexiteers try to make her take a tougher line.
Restive Cabinet ministers have effectively sent Mrs May an ultimatum by warning she must abandon her Chequers blueprint for future trade unless it is accepted by European leaders in the next week.
Meanwhile, Mrs May’s allies have launched a covert bid to win over moderate Labour MPs amid fears she could fail to get any deal she managed to strike through Parliament.
The premier is preparing to table revamped proposals for a ‘backstop’ to prevent a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic in the coming days.
There are expected to be concessions on how regulations can be enforced – although Mrs May will hold the line that the province cannot be split from the rest of the UK’s customs jurisdiction.
A key part of the compromise plan is thought to be keeping the whole UK in the customs union for longer, to ensure a comprehensive trade deal can be fully implemented that the UK hopes will mean the backstop is not needed.
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However, senior Tories are insisting there must be a specific end date to the customs extension – and it must be before the general election scheduled for 2022.
‘After that we can’t know who will be in charge, so we must be fully out bu then,’ a Brexiteer told The Times.
There are also serious doubts over whether the DUP will support Mrs May’s new backstop proposals, after leader Arlene Foster insisted she had a ‘blood red’ line against extra checks within the UK.
The European Commission is expected to offer Britain a ‘supercharged’ free trade deal later this week, but will reject about 60 to 70 per cent of the Prime Minister’s Chequers proposals, including the demand for frictionless trade.
Despite the anticipated setback, ministers are planning to hold off on moves to force Mrs May into ditching her Chequers plan until after next week’s meeting in Brussels.
A Cabinet source said: ‘Ministers will let her go to the European Council sticking to her Chequers plan.
EU negotiator Michel Barnier (pictured right with Irish PM Leo Varadkar) has been making more optimistic noises about the prospects for a deal
DUP leader Arlene Foster (pictured centre at Tory conference last week) has warned she has ‘blood red’ lines against extra checks between mainland Britain and Northern Ireland
‘If the Tory party conference achieved anything, it gave her that extra space. But if there is another Salzburg-style rejection at the summit then things will start to get fruity.
‘There will be pressure from various sides. ‘People will then be saying, “what is Plan B? You now need to tell us that”.’
Brexit has been kept off the agenda for tomorrow’s Cabinet meeting, where ministers will instead discuss the Budget, racial equality, world mental health day, the UN General Assembly and this week’s illegal wildlife trade conference.
A source said: ‘The Budget is an easy topic to keep everybody talking about anything other than Brexit. Every department will be making their case for more money.’
However, Mrs May is expected to present her latest thinking on Brexit – including a revised proposal on how to resolve the Irish problem – at a Cabinet meeting the following Tuesday, before she flies to Brussels.
Hopes of a breakthrough in Brexit talks continued to rise yesterday as Ireland said the chances of a deal were good. Dublin’s deputy prime minister Simon Coveney told Sky News: ‘The withdrawal treaty is already about 90 per cent agreed in terms of text – the issues that have not been signed off yet relate predominantly to Ireland and the two negotiating teams need to lock themselves in a room for the next ten days or so.’
The optimistic remarks came after both European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker and his counterpart at the European Council, Donald Tusk, delivered unusually upbeat messages at the weekend.
Mr Juncker said: ‘I have reason to think that the rapprochement potential between both sides has increased in recent days.’
Mr Tusk said the EU was trying to agree a deal this month, adding: ‘I think there is a chance to have an accord by the end of the year.’
Meanwhile, prominent Tory Brexiteers Iain Duncan Smith and Jacob Rees-Mogg yesterday said they would be willing to allow EU officials to be stationed at UK ports after Brexit.
Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, former Tory leader Mr Duncan Smith said the compromise would answer some of the concerns about the Irish border.
He said: ‘We can… (conduct) regulatory and customs checks together in a way that respects the EU’s single market, by building on systems already in place at the channel ports.’
A No 10 source said: ‘We have always said we are working hard for a deal this autumn. However, there remain big issues to work through, and as the Prime Minister has said, this will require movement on the EU side.’
What are the options for the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic after Brexit?
Theresa May and Jean-Claude Juncker agreed the outline of a divorce deal in December
Theresa May and the EU effectively fudged the Irish border issue in the Brexit divorce deal before Christmas.
But the commitments to leave the EU customs union, keep a soft border, and avoid divisions within the UK were always going to need reconciling at some stage. Currently 110million journeys take place across the border every year.
All sides in the negotiations insist they want to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, but their ideas for how the issues should be solved are very different.
If they fail to strike a deal it could mean a hard border on the island – which could potentially put the Good Friday Agreement at risk.
The agreement – struck in 1998 after years of tense negotiations and a series of failed ceasefires – brought to an end decades of the Troubles.
More than 3,500 people died in the ‘low level war’ that saw British Army checkpoints manning the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland.
Both London and Dublin fear reinstalling a hard border – whether by checkpoints or other means – would raise tensions and provoke a renewal of extremism or even violence if people and goods were not able to freely cross.
The DUP – which opposed the Good Friday Agreement – is determined to maintain Northern Ireland inside the UK at all costs, while also insisting it wants an open border.
The UK blueprint:
The PM has made clear her favoured outcome for Brexit is a deep free trade deal with the EU.
The UK side iniset out two options for how the border could look.
One would see a highly streamlined customs arrangement, using a combination of technology and goodwill to minimise the checks on trade.
There would be no entry or exit declarations for goods at the border, while ‘advanced’ IT and trusted trader schemes would remove the need for vehicles to be stopped.
Boris Johnson has suggested that a slightly ‘harder’ border might be acceptable, as long as it was invisible and did not inhibit flow of people and goods.
However, critics say that cameras to read number plates would constitute physical infrastructure and be unacceptable.
The second option has been described as a customs partnership, which would see the UK collect tariffs on behalf of the EU – along with its own tariffs for goods heading into the wider British market.
However, this option has been causing deep disquiet among Brexiteers who regard it as experimental. They fear it could become indistinguishable from actual membership of the customs union, and might collapse.
Brussels has dismissed both options as ‘Narnia’ – insisting no-one has shown how they can work with the UK outside an EU customs union.
The EU blueprint:
The divorce deal set out a ‘fallback’ option under which the UK would maintain ‘full alignment’ with enough rules of the customs union and single market to prevent a hard border and protect the Good Friday Agreement.
The inclusion of this clause, at the demand of Ireland, almost wrecked the deal until Mrs May added a commitment that there would also be full alignment between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
But the EU has now translated this option into a legal text – and hardened it further to make clear Northern Ireland would be fully within the EU customs union.
Mrs May says no Prime Minister could ever agree to such terms, as they would undermine the constitutional integrity of the UK.
A hard border:
Neither side wants a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.
But they appear to be locked in a cyclical dispute, with each adamant the other’s solutions are impossible to accept.
If there is no deal and the UK and EU reverts to basic World Trade Organisation (WTO) relationship, theoretically there would need to be physical border posts with customs checks on vehicles and goods.
That could prove catastrophic for the Good Friday Agreement, with fears terrorists would resurface and the cycle of violence escalate.
Many Brexiteers have suggested Britain could simply refuse to erect a hard border – and dare the EU to put up their own fences.
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