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Fellow Tories accuse Rees-Mogg of trying to blackmail PM on Brexit Tory differences over UK's post-Brexit future spill into the open
(about 9 hours later)
Conservative ministers and backbenchers have rounded on Jacob Rees-Mogg, calling the leading Brexiter’s threats to the prime minister “hectoring nonsense and blackmail”. Theresa May came under pressure to spell out her new “third way” customs proposals on a day when Conservative differences over the country’s post-Brexit future spilled into the open ahead of a crucial cabinet summit.
Two Foreign Office ministers, Alistair Burt and Alan Duncan, publicly rebuked Rees-Mogg after he wrote a Telegraph article warning Theresa May she risked splitting her party like Sir Robert Peel did when pushing through changes to trade policy during parliamentary battles over the repeal of the corn laws in 1846. Downing Street indicated it had produced a fresh model for the UK’s post-Brexit trading arrangements but would not supply details ahead of Friday’s Chequers away day with some cabinet members complaining they had not seen it.
Rees-Mogg, who chairs the European Research Group (ERG) of pro-Brexit Tory MPs, wrote: “Theresa May must stand firm for what she herself has promised. One former Tory leader, Sir Robert Peel, decided to break his manifesto pledge and passed legislation with the majority of his party voting the other way. The new idea was outlined early on Monday morning but the prime minister made only a passing reference to it when she appeared in the Commons. May, promising to publish the long-awaited Brexit white paper next week, said it would include “proposals relating to customs and Northern Ireland”.
“This left the Conservatives out of office for 28 years. At least he did so for a policy that works. At Chequers, [May] must stick to her righteous cause and deliver what she has said she would, she must use her undoubted grace to persevere.” It is designed to replace the discredited customs partnership model that was favoured by May and the maximum facilitation model preferred by the Brexiters and the majority of her inner cabinet, both of which had been rejected by the European Union as unworkable.
Burt accused Rees-Mogg of being part of an “ideological clique” in a tweet after the article was published. “Just tired of this endless threat and counter-threat,” he wrote. “Why don’t we want the best for the UK than for our own ideological cliques? And there are others in this negotiation as far as I’m aware?” But there were complaints about the lack of detail, with some senior cabinet members saying they were not aware of what was contained in fresh proposals, while Number 10 would not be drawn on who had been involved in its development.
Duncan accused Rees-Mogg of “insolence” and said his “lecturing and threatening the PM is just too much”. He said the MP’s behaviour risked “debasing government, party, country and himself”. Details would be unveiled for the full cabinet to sign off at Chequers on Friday, although there were early indications it would not involve the UK signing up to the EU’s system of common external tariff for goods in a revamped maximum facilitation proposal as some Brexiters had feared.
“The PM must be given maximum latitude and backing,” he tweeted. “The ideological right are a minority despite their noise and should pipe down.” Jeremy Corbyn sought to play up Tory divisions on the UK’s post Brexit future in the Commons. Speaking in a debate about last week’s European council meeting, the Labour leader said he “looked forward to the much vaunted third way on customs that the prime minister hopes will unite her cabinet, because the current chaos at the heart of government leaves us facing crucial unanswered questions”.
Another minister, Richard Harrington, said his colleagues should “stop putting their own dogma above the good of the country and the party”. In reply, May sought to turn the tables on Labour. “At every stage the Labour party has said there is no progress on Brexit. At every stage we have delivered. They said we wouldn’t deliver article 50, but we did.”
The junior business minister tweeted: “We should all support the prime minister and the businesses that employ so many people in good jobs and export so much.” The prime minister will travel to see Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister, on Tuesday and the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, on Thursday. Number 10 insisted that neither leader would get an advance briefing on the customs proposal that is intended to break the political deadlock in the Tory party.
Criticism also came from Tory backbenchers, including Sir Nicholas Soames, Simon Hoare and Sarah Wollaston, with Soames tweeting Rees-Mogg should “shut up” and “put a sock in it”. Meanwhile, the foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, was forced last night to leap to the defence of leading Brexiter Jacob Rees-Mogg, after the MP for North East Somerset was criticised by party colleagues for warning that May risked splitting her party as Sir Robert Peel did when he forced through the repeal of the corn laws in 1846.
A message for my old friend @Jacob_Rees_Mogg shut up #letthePMdoherjobwithoutthisconstantcarpingputasockinitA message for my old friend @Jacob_Rees_Mogg shut up #letthePMdoherjobwithoutthisconstantcarpingputasockinit
Hoare, the MP for North Dorset, attacked Rees-Mogg’s Peel comparison. “The hectoring nonsense [and] blackmail has to stop, the reality of parliamentary arithmetic dawn and the calamity of a Corbyn government woken up to,” he tweeted. As May’s statement to the Commons was concluding, Johnson tweeted: “It’s vital that all MPs are able to air their views on Brexit. Whatever your position, I hope we can all agree that Jacob Rees-Mogg is a principled and dedicated MP who wants the best for our country.”
“Tories are commonsense pragmatists NOT dogmatic vestal virgins. The vast majority of MPs on a [cross]-party basis will do what’s right for the country, jobs, economy and national interest. It’s not an ego-fest and we all need to remember that. Earlier, two Foreign Office ministers, Alistair Burt and Alan Duncan, publicly rebuked Rees-Mogg. Duncan accused him of “insolence” and said his “lecturing and threatening the PM is just too much”, adding: “The ideological right are a minority despite their noise and should pipe down.”
“Peel was also delivering freer trade and cheap bread which the growing industrial towns needed and demanded … Peel put country before party.” Burt accused Rees-Mogg of being part of an “ideological clique” in a tweet after the article was published. “Just tired of this endless threat and counter-threat,” he wrote. “Why don’t we want the best for the UK than for our own ideological cliques? And there are others in this negotiation as far as I’m aware?”
Hoare’s tweets drew further significant support from backbenchers. The Scottish Tory MP Paul Masterton tweeted “well said” and others retweeted the post, including Nick Boles, Nicky Morgan, Simon Hart, Bob Neill, Antoinette Sandbach and the former Cabinet Office minister Ben Gummer, one of the architects of the 2017 Tory manifesto. Rees-Mogg, who chairs the European Research Group (ERG) of pro-Brexit Tory MPs, writing in the Telegraph, said: “Theresa May must stand firm for what she herself has promised. One former Tory leader, Sir Robert Peel, decided to break his manifesto pledge and passed legislation with the majority of his party voting the other way.
Wollaston, part of a contingent of soft-Brexit Tory MPs that has sometimes rebelled against the government, said the corn laws were “wrong then just as business-destroying hard Brexit would be wrong now … Trade with our closest neighbours needs to be frictionless and free.” “This left the Conservatives out of office for 28 years. At least he did so for a policy that works. At Chequers, [May] must stick to her righteous cause and deliver what she has said she would, she must use her undoubted grace to persevere.” Allies of Rees-Mogg said privately that they believed they had the numbers to help vote down May’s final deal with the EU if they thought it made too many concessions to Brussels.
Wollaston was one of the MPs depicted as “mutineers” on the front of the Telegraph before a vote on the EU withdrawal bill in parliament in December. Nicky Morgan, a former education secretary, urged May not to listen to the “arbitrary red lines” of Brexiters like Rees-Mogg. Speaking in the Commons, to complaints from her own benches, Morgan called on the prime minister to “find a pragmatic, sensible and flexible Brexit which delivers on the referendum result of two years ago but protects businesses and jobs and the economy and entrepreneurs, otherwise we will not be thanked for the mess that we end up in”.
She suggested there would be no similar treatment of pro-Brexit MPs who undermined the prime minister, saying they were “repeatedly threatening the PM unless she bends to their will”. Cabinet ministers intend to turn on the charm to justify their post-Brexit strategy, with David Davis, the Brexit secretary, organising a summit for business leaders at Chevening House on 20 July, the week after the white paper is published.
“They should take note; there is no parliamentary majority to just walk away and destroy business with a disastrous hard Brexit,” she tweeted. It comes after Johnson had reportedly said “fuck business” at a reception in response to corporate concerns about the lack of clarity emerging from the British government, and a desire by business for a soft Brexit deal that would as far as possible replicate the UK’s existing trading relations with the EU.
The Tory MP Vicky Ford, a former MEP, said the majority of MPs did not back Rees-Mogg’s stance. “If this becomes a binary choice between staying in the single market and customs union or no deal, then I do not believe there is a majority for no deal,” she told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. The invitation from Davis said that the idea was to “to use this opportunity to assemble another group of business leaders from across the economy, including some new voices who were unable to join us last time, to continue the dialogue”.
The Scottish Conservative Andrew Bowie, who is a member of the ERG, was also cautiously critical, tweeting: “My Conservative party are a commonsense, pragmatic, free trading, liberal party that governs and takes commonsense decisions in the national interest – not in the interests of an ideological clique ... on whatever side of an argument.”
Richard Benyon, another backbencher, said: “I think we would all benefit from a period of silence from the ultras on both ends.”
Downing Street would not comment on whether the prime minister believed Rees-Mogg was undermining her.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
BrexitBrexit
European Union
Foreign policy
Theresa MayTheresa May
Conservatives Jacob Rees-Mogg
Boris Johnson
David Davies
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