No confidence in May move gathering pace

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THE CHEQUERS Brexit compromise White Paper on the UK’s plans to leave the EU is to be published today. The plan, thrashed out behind closed doors, has already seen four Tory leaders quit, and a ‘no confidence’ motion in May gathering pace.

The UK Brexit plan will go forward to Brussels for discussion and has to be agreed by all 27 European states. It is expected to be rejected, with the EU Commission putting forward new demands on the UK. This will leave the government to either announce that there is no deal, or to a further capitulation, the latter being the most likely.

Andrew Bridgen became the first Tory MP to publicly confirm he had sent a letter calling for a vote of no confidence in May. Under Conservative Party rules, it requires 15% of all Tory MPs – currently 48 – to write to the chairman of the backbench 1922 Committee to trigger a vote of no confidence in the leader.

Two vice-chairs of the Conservative Party quit their posts in protest at Theresa May’s Chequers Brexit compromise plan on Tuesday. Tory party vice-chairs Maria Caulfield and Ben Bradley added to May’s accelerating crisis after Brexit secretary David Davis quit on Sunday night and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson on Monday.

‘This policy will be bad for our country and bad for the party,’ Caulfield said. In her resignation letter to May, Caulfield, the MP for Lewes in Sussex, said the proposed new trading relationship with the EU did not ‘fully embrace the opportunities that Brexit can provide’.

Bradley, who posted a positive message of support for May before Friday’s Chequers meeting, said he could not now ‘with any sincerity defend this course’ to voters in his Leave-backing constituency of Mansfield. Bridgen’s letter to the chairman of the 1922 Committee, Graham Brady, stating he had no confidence in May, has been leaked, adding fuel to the fire.

Bridgen wrote: ‘The negotiations with the European Union appear to have deteriorated into a state of complete capitulation. ‘We have to deliver Brexit or we will be punished at the polls at the next General Election. ‘All we have asked from the Prime Minister is that she sticks to what she has promised on repeated occasions when she declared that “Brexit means Brexit” and pledged to take back control of our money borders and laws.

‘But it now appears those promises are all a pretence and a charade intended to dupe the electorate which is an insult to their intelligence. ‘Therefore, in the interests of our country and the future of the Conservative Party, I feel the time has come for a new leader, so I am writing this letter to inform you I have no confidence in the Prime Minister.’

At PM Qs yesterday Minister for the Cabinet Office David Lidington stood in for May who was at the NATO summit in Brussels. Labour’s Shadow Secretary of State Emily Thornberry said to Lidington: ‘The government could have taken a decisive step towards a sensible, workable deal to protect jobs and trade, but we have ended up with them proposing a dog’s Brexit which will satisfy no one, which will not fly in Europe, which will waste the next few weeks.’

May had said that she was relying on Labour and LibDem MPs to get the White Paper through. Lidington said: ‘The Labour Party used to say that they respected the referendum result, but now they are toying once again with the idea of a second referendum. The Labour leader will not rule it out, the deputy leader won’t rule it out, the shadow Brexit secretary won’t rule it out. And nothing could be better calculated to undermine our negotiating position.’

Thornberry then said that the Chequers plan does not go far enough in compromising with the EU. She said: ‘There is an easy answer to this mess, an alternative that will offer all the benefits of the Chequers free trade area with no new technology, no cost, no delay. An alternative that both this House and Europe will accept, as an alternative for both goods and services. So can I appeal to the Minister of State, do what I urged him to do two years ago, and instead of trying to negotiate some half-baked back door version of the Customs Union, get on with negotiating the real thing.’