Tag: Polly Toynbee

“It’s a victory, and not a close victory,” the justice secretary, David Gauke, said. “It’s a comfortable victory. We’ve had an election and a majority backing the prime minister. This has been hanging over her for months and months. There has been an attempt, and it’s failed.” Play Video 2:00 Immediately afterwards, and 10 yards down the corridor, Mark Francois, the deputy leader of the pro-Brexit European Research Group (ERG), was giving the 200 to 117 margin a very different perspective. Asked if the ERG had failed in its mission to oust May, Francois said: “I wouldn’t call 117 votes a busted flush. But if you’re a PM and a third of your MPs vote against you, that is very bad news.” Theresa May survives. Things are so bad we have to be grateful for that | Polly Toynbee Read more Jacob Rees-Mogg, the chairman of the ERG, said the result was terrible for Theresa May and called on her to resign. He told the BBC: “It’s a terrible result for the prime minister, it really is.” With the “payroll vote” of ministers, parliamentary aides and trade envoys all likely to have backed Mrs May, a majority of the remaining 160-170 backbenchers voted no confidence in her, he said. “Now it’s time for everyone in the party to unite behind the prime minister and allow her to get on with what is a hugely important job for this country,” said Damian Green, her former deputy and still a close ally.

In current plans, the backstop, under which the whole of the UK would stay in a customs union while Northern Ireland alone effectively stayed in the single market, would be enacted in December 2020 if a bespoke technological solution or trade deal could not be reached by then. Foster has insisted she will not accept any Brexit deal under which Northern Ireland is treated differently to the rest of the UK. There was alarm about the language used by Downing Street on Friday that Theresa May “would never agree to a deal that would trap the UK in a backstop permanently”. The plan to include an extension clause in the withdrawal agreement would be a way to assuage concerns. A senior EU diplomat said that the Brexit secretary, Dominic Raab, could arrive at the European commission on Monday, should a deal be agreed during intensive talks over the weekend. “Mr Raab has stated he might come to Brussels on Monday,” the diplomat said. The negotiating teams are back in their offices today discussing outcome of talks over the last few days.” May asked in September last year for a transition period, which she optimistically described in her Florence speech at the time as a period of implementation of aspects of the future trade deal, including migration controls. The prime minister’s spokeswoman said on Friday: “When we published our plans in June on a UK-wide customs backstop, we were absolutely clear that the arrangement would be temporary, and only in place until our future economic relationship is ready.” Mujtaba Rahman, a former Treasury and European commission official, and now head of Europe for the Eurasia Group risk consultancy, said an extra six months would be needed if only for a trade deal to be negotiated and ratified by all the member states’ parliaments. “The UK has no choice but to ask for a mechanism to extend the transition, not least to further mollify the DUP,” Rahman said. “But doing so is also a recognition of reality: both the UK and the EU’s political leadership will change next year, meaning substantive trade negotiations are unlikely to begin until September 2019 at the earliest.” Jacob Rees-Mogg, the chair of the European Research Group, said extending the transition “would not necessarily make the backstop redundant and would be very expensive” because of the expected additional contributions to the EU budget.