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Brexit: May hit by two cabinet resignations as Raab and McVey quit over plan - Politics live
Brexit: May hit by two cabinet resignations as Raab and McVey quit over plan - Politics live
(35 minutes later)
May is now on the outline future partnership.
Anna Soubry, the Consevative pro-European, says May cannot honour the promises made by Brexiters because those cannot be met. She asks May to not rule out a second referendum.
Free movement will end once and for all, she says.
May says she cannot give that assurance. The UK will leave the EU on 29 March next year, she says.
She says no other advanced economy has such good access to the EU for goods.
Nigel Dodds, the DUP leader, says he could take May through the promises she made in public, and private, to his party. But it would be a waste of time because “she clearly doesn’t listen”. He says the five people who have resigned today have all said May’s deal would compromise the integrity of the UK. We can either vote to protect the UK. Or vote for a vassal state that will break it up, he says.
And there are commitments on services that go well beyond WTO requirements.
May says her commitments to Northern Ireland remain.
The UK will leave the common agricultural policy and the common fisheries policy, she says.
She says neither side want to see the backstop exercised.
There is a close and flexible partnership on defence and security.
She says she does not accept that she has not considered Northern Ireland in this process. (Dodds signals to her he is not saying that.)
May says some people urged her to rip up the backstop.
John Redwood, the Tory Brexiter, says the UK should spend the £39bn on itself, rather than on the EU.
But that would have been irresponsible, and it would have meant reneging on promises made to the people of Northern Ireland.
May says the government continues to meet its legal obligations.
May is taking MPs through the details.
Sir Vince Cable, the Lib Dem leader, says that May herself said there were two alternatives to her plan: a no-deal Brexit, and no Brexit. What plans is May making for no Brexit, including asking if article 50 could be revoked.
She says the withdrawal detail shows how the UK will leave the EU in 134 days time.
May says the government is not planning for no Brexit.
She says she thinks the Irish border issue will best be solved through the future relationship.
Ian Duncan Smith, the Tory former leader, says he has deep misgivings about this plan. We have the sovereign right to leave bodies like Nato and the UN, but not to leave the backstop under this plan.
But the withdrawal agreement includes a backstop. This has not been “a comfortable process”, she says. Neither the UK nor the EU are totally happy with it.
May says she shares Duncan Smith’s concerns. But the withdrawal agreement had to have an Irish backstop.
But, she says, any deal would have to have a backstop. It would not be possible to have an alternative, like Canada plus plus plus, without it.
The backstop is “not necessarily what would happen”, she says. She says the UK could choose to extend the transition (she calls it implementation period) instead.
She says the EU has made concessions.
She accepts that coming out of the backstop would require “mutual consent”. She says: “I won’t make any bones about that.”
First, the plan for the Northern Ireland only backstop has been dropped.
She insists it is her intention to work to ensure that such an arrangement is not necessary.
Second, the transition could be extended as an alternative to the backstop.
Responding to Blackford, May says the reason Scotland is treated differently from Northern Ireland is because Northern Ireland will be the only part of the UK that will have a land border with the EU after Brexit.
Third, the plan commits both parties to use “best endeavours” to ensure this is not use. And if the backtop is used, it will be “temporary”. There will be a mechanism for ending it.
And Scotland is not mentioned because it is part of the United Kingdom, she says.
Finally, Northern Ireland businesses will have full access to the UK single market.
From the Labour MP Mary Creagh
Theresa May is making her Commons statement on the Brexit deal now.
Chief whip staring at phone with face like thunder. 5 ministers gone in 3 hours.
We may be hear for a while. John Bercow, the speaker, always lets statements of this kind run, and interest in this one is enormous. I wouldn’t be surprised if it runs for up to three hours.
This is from CityAM’s Owen Bennett (who is writing a biography of Michael Gove.)
Anne-Marie Trevelyan has resigned as a parliamentary private secretary.
No word from @michaelgove’s team about where he is. Radio silence. Is he plotting?
It is with sadness that I have submitted my letter of resignation as PPS to the Education Ministers to the Prime Minister. It has been a joy and a privilege to have served in defence and education. pic.twitter.com/AWlMXNxtT0
Ian Blackford, the SNP’s leader at Westminser, says to lose two Brexit secretaries in six months is chaotic. He says that May looks desperate and defeated.
My colleague Jesssica Elgot is tipping Michael Gove, the environment secretary, as a possible replacement for Dominic Raab as Brexit secretary.
Scotland is not even mentioned in the document, he says. Yet there are 100 references to Northern Ireland, and references to Gibraltar and the Isle of Man too. If Northern Ireland can stay in the single market, why not Scotland too? He says May is ignoring the democratic desires of Scotland.
There surely can't be a credible candidate for Brexit secretary other than Michael Gove. That might be the only way to keep this show on the road. Depends on his choices today, I suppose.
Ken Clarke, the Conservative pro-European, asks May if she agrees that the main benefits from EU membership have come from having a completely open border. So will she agree not to give that up until we know what we are changing to?
The case for Gove is that he is most heavyweight Brexiter left standing in cabinet following the resignations of David Davis, Boris Johnson and Dominic Raab. He is also a minister with a reputation for executive effectiveness. And if anyone could sell a Brexit plan to the ERG, it would be him.
May says the UK has heard from business the importance of frictionless borders. That is why the future plan is based on that.
He was also, reportedly, the only Brexiter who backed the plan at yesterday’s cabinet.
May is responding to Corbyn.
The case against Gove is that Theresa May doesn’t trust him an inch, on the understandable grounds that in the past he has already betrayed two senior Tories to whom he was very close (David Cameron and then Boris Johnson.)
She says the government is planning for no deal.
If Gove were to get the job, it is conceivable that he could demand changes to the government’s Brexit strategy. Gove has in the past argued that Brexiters should focus on getting the UK out of the EU, with a view to hardening up Brexit later. And his close ally Nick Boles has been pushing the “Norway for Now” option – staying in the European Economic Area, with a view to perhaps moving to a Canada-style trade deal later.
She says there are 500 pages of legal text. It is not ill-defined.
Suella Braverman, a junior Brexit minister, has resigned.
She says the political declaration does refer to the plan to create a free trade area between the UK and the EU.
It is with deep regret and after reflection that I have had to tender my resignation today as a Brexit Minister. Thank you for the opportunity. I look forward to working to support Brexit from the Backbenches. This has not been an easy decision. pic.twitter.com/C0kply8aLE
And Corbyn said there were no references to extradition in the document, she says. But she does not know what he read. There are references to extradition. And Corbyn was also wrong to say Europol was not mentioned. The document says the UK does want to continue with that, she says.
Braverman was chair of the European Research Group before she joined the government. When David Davis and Steve Baker resigned from the Brexit department over the Chequers plans, for a while there were reports that she was going too. But on that occasion she was persuaded to stay.
Corbyn says there is no clarity about a future immigration strategy.
These are from the BBC’s political editor, Laura Kuenssberg.
After the Windrush scandal, EU nationals living in the UK need certainty.
Brexiteer sources hoping Mordaunt goes next and soon, not clear yet if she actually will - Brexiteer ministers all now under huge pressure
He says parliament should not accept a false choice between no deal and this deal.
If May loses three Cabinet ministers this morning then is it credible to think she can keep her deal, and keep her job?
The government should withdraw this “half-baked deal” that does not have the backing of the cabinet, parliament or the country as a whole.
Here is an extract from Esther McVey’s resignation letter.
The proposals put before cabinet, which will soon be judged by the entire country, mean handing over around £39bn to the EU without anything in return. It will trap us in a customs union, despite you specifically promising the British people we would not be. It will bind the hands of not only this, but future governments in pursuing genuine free trade policies. We wouldn’t be taking back control, we would be handing over control to the EU and even to a third country for arbitration ...
We have gone from no deal is better than a bad deal, to any deal is better than no deal.
Here is the text of McVey’s resignation.
Earlier this morning I informed the Prime Minister I was resigning from her Cabinet pic.twitter.com/ZeBkL5n2xH
This is from the Telegraph’s Steven Swinford.
BREAKINGEsther McVey has become the second Cabinet minister to quit this morningFeels like she had no choice but to go after extraordinary confrontations in Cabinet yesterday
Followed by this from the BBC.
McVey gone before PM has chance to get to her feet in the Commons - three resignations by 10am
The health secretary, Matt Hancock, has admitted that the agreement is “not perfect” but claimed it is good for Britain.
Speaking on the Today programme minutes after Shailesh Vara resigned, but before Dominic Raab quit, he said:
In any negotiated agreement of course there are going to be details that are compromises and it is not perfect. Everyone can find a point in this that they may disagree with, but you have got to look at the deal as a whole. The cabinet as a whole backed the deal ... It is good for Britain.
Asked about reports that some ministers were crying in cabinet during Wednesday five-hour meeting, Hancock said:
I didn’t see any tears. There was an incredibly civil, and very open and frank discussion.
Hancock did not deny reports that he warned cabinet that lives could be lost if there no deal because of disruption to the supplies of vital medicines. He said:
I am not going to go into what anybody said, and that includes me. We need to make sure that everybody does what’s necessary, if there is no deal, to have the unhindered flow of medicines that people need. No deal is not pretty. It is very difficult for the economy and for lots of other areas like health care.
We are working very hard to ensure that people have the unhindered flow and access to medicines that they need. There is a lot of work to do that but I hope that by this deal we can avoid a no deal Brexit. We can avoid a second referendum and we can have a high quality future relationship with the EU and that’s what this deal provides.
Hancock added:
A second referendum would be divisive but it would not be decisive. And given all of he pain of the last few years in British politics and the angst that it has caused, a second referendum would be even worse.
From ITV’s Paul Brand
BREAKING: I understand another resignation imminent - more junior though. Stand by.
The Tory Brexiter Anne Marie Morris has just told the BBC that she believes more than 48 of her colleagues have already written to Sir Graham Brady, chair of the backbench 1922 committee, calling for a vote of no confidence in Theresa May. But some of those letters were written on the condition that they could not be activated until the author agreed, she said. She said the time had come for those MPs to now authorise the use of their letters.
She said she was calling for the removal of May because she thought that was necessary for Brexit to be delivered.
Some cabinet resignations matter more than others. Over time we will find out quite how significant this one is, but it is quite conceivable that this could in time be seen as the move that sank Theresa May’s Brexit plan. Here are some snap thoughts.
1- Dominic Raab’s decision to resign as Brexit secretary is likely to encourage other Brexiter cabinet minsters to quit too. We don’t know yet if Brexiter cabinet ministers are coordinating their moves today, but we do know that around 11 ministers expressed strong reservations about the deal at yesterday’s cabinet and in politics there is a natural tendency not to allow yourself to be outflanked by people who share your views - particularly if you think there might be a party leadership contest coming at some point in the future where whether or not you supported May’s Brexit plan becomes the defining issue (just as where you stood on the Iraq war has been a defining issue in Labour contests since 2010.)
2 - Even at the best of times, this would be a very serious blow to May’s authority. Brexit secretary is a senior post, and May has now lost two of them within six months. She would have been relying on Raab to help sell her deal to MPs, and to help pave the way for the EU summit scheduled for Sunday 25 November. Now she hasn’t got someone doing that job at a time when it’s most necessary. (Presumably she will be wary about appointing a successor until she knows who else is going to resign.)
3 - But these are not the best of times, and Raab’s resignation is bound to embolden those MPs determined to vote down May’s plans. When David Davis, Raab’s predecessor, and Boris Johnson quit in July over the Chequers plan, their resignations could be used by May to persuade remain-voting Tories that she was moving in their direction. But the arguments that Raab is making (see 9.09am) are identical to those made by Jo Johnson, the remain-voting transport minister who resigned on Friday, and Shailesh Vara, the remain-voting Northern Ireland minister who quit earlier this morning. (See 7.53am.) May wanted to unite both wings of her party; she has - against her.
4 - The Raab resignation may also encourage those Brexiter Tories who are mulling over whether or not to submit letters demanding a vote of no confidence in May. A vote will be held if 48 letters get received. It is very possible that May would win such a vote, because there is no alternative leader with general support in the party. It is also worth pointing out that Raab’s letter was not intended to provoke such a vote; in it, he made a point of saying his respect for May and her fortitude “remains undimmed”.
5- Will the Brexit vote event take place? Some reports have suggested that the Commons vote on May’s Brexit deal will be tight, or on a knife-edge. That is not correct. Judging by what people are saying currently, the vote looks very one-sided, with May set to lose heavily. It is impossible to know how events will pan out, but governments tend not to schedule votes when they know they are bound to lose, and so some sort of reset is not wholly inconceivable.
Labour has put out this response to Dominic Raab’s resignation from Jon Trickett, the shadow minister for the Cabinet Office. Trickett said:
The government is falling apart before our eyes as for a second time the Brexit secretary has refused to back the prime minister’s Brexit plan. This so-called deal has unravelled before our eyes.
This is the twentieth Minister to resign from Theresa May’s government in her two year premiership. Theresa May has no authority left and is clearly incapable of delivering a Brexit deal that commands even the support of her cabinet - let alone parliament and the people of our country.
Iain Duncan Smith, a leading Tory Brexiter and former party party leader, has just told BBC News that the impact of Raab’s resignation will be “devastating”. He says that Raab’s letter suggests that, within government, he has been ignored.
