EU ‘prepares concessions’ on Irish border amid claims May is on track for Brexit deal by the end of the year but Boris Johnson warns her Chequers blueprint will be a ‘disaster’
- PM has given all-access interview to BBC where she says: ‘It’s my deal or no deal’
- Mr May also said she to being ‘irritated’ by the debate over her leadership
- Boris Johnson’s verbal assault on PM continues as he calls Brexit plan write off
- Boris and Sajid Javid may use party conference to launch their leadership bids
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Embattled Theresa May was handed a Brexit lifeline today amid claims that the EU is ready to make concessions over the Irish border.
In a potential breakthrough, Brussels is said to be ready to accept that technology can be used to avoid friction between Northern Ireland and the Republic.
The move could pave the way for a deal to be done by the end of the year – as long as Mrs May can hold warring Tories together long enough to get it through Parliament.
But the scale of the task she still faces was underlined today when Boris Johnson launched another furious attack on her Brexit plan.
He warned that it would make the decision to leave the EU a ‘write off’ and put Britain under ‘foreign rule’ for the first time since 1066.
As she heads into a potential turbulent conference season, Mrs May used an interview with BBC Panorama to dismiss ‘irritating’ leadership jockeying and insist she is focused on the country’s future rather than her own.
She said that her Chequers blueprint was the only alternative to ‘no deal’ and crashing out of the bloc.
She also promised to be ‘bloody difficult’ with EU negotiators as she trues to push through an agreement.
Theresa May, pictured with Nick Robinson, has told the BBC she is irritated about leadership speculation as she pushes her Brexit deal
Mrs May has promised to be ‘bloody difficult’ while negotiating with Brussels – but Boris Johnson has suggested her plan is a car crash
Boris Johnson jogs near his Oxfordshire home yesterday as he launched another Brexit assault on the PM
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But Mr Johnson condemned her strategy to leave the EU and said her proposals ‘mean for the first time since 1066 our leaders were deliberately acquiescing in foreign rule’.
Home Secretary Sajid Javid used a Cabinet meeting last week to argue for ‘shock and awe’ tax cuts for business and a bonfire for regulation – in what was seen as his pitch for the top job.
What is in Theresa May’s Brexit blueprint?
These are some of the key features of the Chequers plan being pushed by the UK government:
- A new free trade area in goods, based on a ‘common rulebook’ of EU regulations necessary. This will require the UK to commit by treaty to match EU rules
- ‘Mobility’ rules which will end automatic freedom of movement, but still allow UK and EU citizens to travel without visas for tourism and temporary work. It will also enable businesses to move staff between countries.
- Continued UK participation in and funding of European agencies covering areas like chemicals, aviation safety and medicines
- A ‘facilitated customs arrangement’, removing the need for customs checks at UK-EU ports. It would allow differing UK and EU tariffs on goods from elsewhere in the world to be paid at the border, removing the need for rebates in the vast majority of cases. In theory this allows Britain to sign trade deals.
- Keeping services – such as banking or legal support – outside of the common rule book, meaning the UK is completely free to set its own regulations. It accepts it will mean less trade in services between the UK and EU.
- Continued co-operation on energy and transport, a ‘common rulebook’ on state aid and commitments to maintain high standards of environmental and workplace protections.
- A security deal allowing continued UK participation in Europol and Eurojust, ‘co-ordination’ of UK and EU policies on foreign affairs, defence and development.
- Continued use of the EHIC health insurance card.
Other potential contenders are expected to use the party’s conference this month to set out their stalls.
Asked if she would reassure the Conservative Party she was not determined to go on and on, Mrs May said: ‘I get a little bit irritated, but this debate is not about my future, this debate is about the future of the people of the UK and the future of the United Kingdom. That’s what I’m focused on and that’s what we should all be focused on.’
In the interview, to be broadcast tonight, Mrs May is asked by former BBC political editor Nick Robinson whether she is still the ‘bloody difficult woman’ referred to by former Tory Chancellor Ken Clarke.
She replies that the ‘bloody difficult woman’ is ‘still there’, but ‘there’s a difference between those who think you can only be bloody difficult in public, and those who think actually you bide your time, and you’re bloody difficult when the time is right – and when it really matters’.
International Trade Secretary Liam Fox yesterday said he would back Mrs May if she wanted to fight the next election as party leader.
He told Sky News’s Sophy Ridge On Sunday: ‘I think the Prime Minister is doing a great job in difficult circumstances domestically because of the lack of a majority in the Commons and in the difficult task of this negotiation with the EU.
‘Supporting the Prime Minister now is in our national interest.
‘Certainly, if she wants to continue on to the next election she will have my support, and I think a British prime minister that delivers a successful Brexit will have the support of the British public.’
Britain is heading full throttle for a total write-off of Brexit if it continues with Theresa May’s disastrous plans for the Irish border, Boris Johnson has claimed.
The backstop deadlock is being used to force the UK into becoming a vassal state and the talks are on course to end in a ‘spectacular political car crash’, according to the former foreign secretary.
Mr Johnson said the European Union’s fallback position for the Irish border would mean Northern Ireland was ‘annexed’ by Brussels.
Alternative plans set out by Mrs May would ‘effectively’ keep Britain in the bloc, he added.
It comes amid reports the EU is preparing to accept use of technology to avoid the need for new border infrastructure.
Environment Secretary Michael Gove described the PM’s divisive Chequers plan as the ‘right one for now’ and suggested it could be altered by a future leader.
But Mr Johnson said the exit proposals were taking the country in the wrong direction.
Khan’s U-turn as he backs second vote on Brexit
Sadiq Khan faced a backlash after he demanded Brexit be postponed to allow time for another EU referendum
Sadiq Khan faced a backlash last night after he demanded Brexit be postponed to allow time for another EU referendum.
The Labour Mayor of London joined calls for a fresh poll despite warning such a move would lead to ‘even more cynicism’ among voters in the weeks after the 2016 vote to leave the EU.
But yesterday he said ministers could ‘easily’ ask Brussels to ‘suspend’ the UK’s exit next March and hold a referendum with the various choices of accepting the Brexit deal or remaining part of the bloc.
Environment Secretary Michael Gove said it was ‘troubling’ that Mr Khan was attempting ‘to frustrate the vote that we had two-and-a-half years ago’.
He told the Andrew Marr Show: ‘People voted clearly, 17.4million people voted to leave the European Union and Sadiq is essentially saying, ‘stop, let’s delay that whole process, let’s throw it into chaos’. And I think that would be a profound mistake.’
Also appearing on Marr, Mr Khan was shown footage of his comments rejecting a second poll in July 2016 because the British people had ‘had a say’.
But he insisted his U-turn was not backing a re-run but giving the public ‘a say for the first time on the outcome’.
He dismissed suggestions he was trying to distract from his track record as mayor. Mr Khan is the most senior Labour figure so far to publicly call for a second referendum. Anti-Brexit campaigners are hoping to use the party’s conference next week to change its official policy in favour of another vote.
But Labour frontbencher Barry Gardiner yesterday told Sky’s Sophy Ridge a fresh referendum would give Theresa May a ‘lifeline’.
The party’s international trade spokesman said the 2016 campaign had caused ‘real divisions’, adding: ‘I think the challenge now is to try to heal society.’ But Labour has not taken the option of another vote off the table.
Tories last night lined up to criticise Mr Khan. Former Cabinet minister Theresa Villiers said: ‘It is so undemocratic to ask people to vote again just because there is an elite establishment that does not like the answer they were given the first time.’
Writing in The Daily Telegraph, he said: ‘If the Brexit negotiations continue on this path they will end, I am afraid, in a spectacular political car crash.’
‘If we are to get out of this mess, and get the great British motor back on track, then we need to understand the Irish backstop, and how it is being used to coerce the UK into becoming a vassal state of Brussels,’ he added.
The EU’s backstop would leave a border down the Irish sea while the UK’s proposal left it ‘volunteering’ to ‘remain effectively in the customs union and large parts of the single market until Brussels says otherwise’, Mr Johnson said.
‘Both versions of the backstop are disastrous,’ he wrote. ‘One threatens the union; the other version – and its close cousin, Chequers – keep us effectively in the EU, as humiliated rules takers.
‘We need to challenge the assumptions of both these Irish backstops, or we are heading full throttle for the ditch with a total write-off of Brexit.
‘We are straining at the gnat of the Irish border problem – in fact we haven’t even tried to chew the gnat – and we are swallowing the camel of EU membership in all but name.’
Mr Johnson said that if Chequers was adopted ‘it would mean that for the first time since 1066 our leaders were deliberately acquiescing in foreign rule’.
However, housing minister Kit Malthouse, who served as a deputy mayor of London under Mr Johnson, warned that Eurosceptics had to ‘take the win’ rather than keep protesting about Chequers.
‘We have to be careful, those of us who voted Leave, that we don’t become like a football team that is arguing about whether to win 2-0 or 4-0,’ he told BBC Radio 4’s Westminster Hour.
‘Take the win, get over the line, and deliver what the people wanted.’
The row comes amid reports the EU is preparing to accept use of technology to avoid the need for new border infrastructure.
EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier is drafting a new ‘protocol’ text that includes the use of technology to minimise checks at the Irish border, according to The Times.
Diplomatic notes seen by the paper state: ‘The biggest unsolved problem is Northern Ireland.
‘There is a political mobilisation in the UK in this regard. Therefore, we are trying to clarify the EU position.’
Mrs May also used the interview, being broadcast tonight, to slap down Mr Johnson for the extraordinary language he has used to criticise her Chequers plan.
In last week’s Mail on Sunday, he likened her the proposals to a ‘suicide vest around the British constitution’.
Mrs May implies that Mr Johnson’s comments, which triggered a political storm, showed he was unfit for the highest office.
‘I have to say that that choice of language is completely inappropriate,’ she said.
Theresa May (on BBC Panorama) has faced resistance from some Brexiteers over the Chequers proposal, which caused the Cabinet resignations of Boris Johnson and David Davis
Michael Gove has called on Eurosceptics to get behind Theresa May’s Chequers plan by arguing it can always be adapted after Brexit (pictured on the Andrew Marr show)
Watching TV with husband Phillip and shouting out answers to the chase: Behind the scenes documentary shows Theresa May’s rather mundane everyday life
As Prime Minister she rarely gets time to put her feet up and watch television.
But a new documentary will reveal how Theresa May and her husband Philip like to watch teatime game show The Chase when they can.
The BBC Panorama programme, to be screened tonight, shows the couple catching up over a cup of tea in front of the television.
A new documentary will reveal how Theresa May and her husband Philip like to watch teatime game show The Chase when they can
The BBC Panorama programme, to be screened tonight, shows the couple catching up over a cup of tea in front of the television
The couple, who celebrated their 38th wedding anniversary earlier this month, met whilst studying at Oxford University
Despite working on papers from her red box, Mrs May, 61, chips in with answers to some of the questions on the ITV quiz show.
The footage was filmed at the Prime Minister’s country residence Chequers on Friday afternoon.
Mr May, 60, who had just returned from a business trip to America, is understood to be a fan of quiz shows and also enjoys BBC Two’s Eggheads.
The couple, who celebrated their 38th wedding anniversary earlier this month, met whilst studying at Oxford University.
Mrs May has previously credited her husband with helping her through the tragedy of both her parents passing away when she was aged 25, the year after they had married.
Speaking on Desert Island Discs in 2014, she said: ‘I had huge support from my husband, and that was very important for me. He was a real rock for me.’
Mr May works as a relationship manager at an investment management company in the City.
Mr May (left) works as a relationship manager at an investment management company in the City
Mrs May has previously credited her husband with helping her through the tragedy of both her parents passing away when she was aged 25, the year after they had married
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