PM Theresa May retreats to country bolthole Chequers to thrash out Brexit plan with Cabinet
A WEEK today, Britain should finally have a detailed answer to the question of what it wants this country’s relationship to be with the EU after Brexit.
For on Friday, Theresa May is summoning the entire Cabinet to Chequers, her country retreat, to thrash this out.
Cabinet Brexiteers, though, are already nervous about getting bounced — of being presented with a done deal they will have to either accept or resign over at a Chequers meeting
This meeting is taking place far too late. Last October, this column urged Mrs May to get the Cabinet to Chequers and not let them leave until they had agreed on the final deal with the EU they should be aiming for.
This delay in setting out what the UK wants is one of the many mistakes that have handed the initiative in these negotiations to the EU.
In an attempt to prevent any walkouts at Chequers, the Prime Minister will spend the next few days seeing senior ministers individually. “She’s peeling off people one by one,” I’m told.
But I understand there has still not yet been a “model that has been selected to go forward for adjudication by the Cabinet”. I am told the approach at the meeting will be “to rule things out rather than rule things in”.
Cabinet Brexiteers, though, are already nervous about getting bounced — of being presented with a done deal they will have to either accept or resign over.
One of those co-ordinating the Brexiteer response tells me: “She’ll have to show her hand before Chequers. The idea of bouncing people with papers they haven’t seen is completely unrealistic as to where we are.
"It might have been possible six months ago, it is not possible now.”
Brexiteers are worried about Downing Street’s direction of travel.
One tells me: “They’re prepared to give away things, but they don’t understand what they are giving away.”
The expectation is that the Government will essentially propose staying in the single market for goods.
But what won’t be addressed is what this means for immigration.
The EU will — at least initially — demand free movement in exchange for the UK staying in the single market for goods.
I understand the current plan is for the white paper to say the UK acknowledges that labour mobility deals normally go alongside trade deals. But there won’t be much more detail than that.
Sajid Javid, the new Home Secretary, takes the view that the Government shouldn’t put immigration on the table in these talks until it knows what it wants.
He is also of the view that if the EU want a deal on immigration then they should have to ask for it.
As a former banker, with experience of commercial negotiations, he — unlike too many people in the Government machine — understands the difference between bid and offer.
Among Cabinet ministers there is a growing view that they will all be back at Chequers in September to discuss how much they are prepared to move on immigration.
But any attempt to get the UK to allow any EU citizen with a job to come here will encounter resistance.
“If you can come if you have a job, that’s basically free movement,” one ally of Brexit Secretary David Davis tells me.
Getting the Cabinet to agree at Chequers, though, is only the first challenge for Mrs May.
The next — and even more difficult one — is to get the EU to engage with what she is proposing.
Hello GB, are you out yet?
CONCERNS are mounting in Whitehall about the Nato summit, and what Donald Trump might say and do.
Compounding the issue is that Trump will go straight from the summit to a dinner in Britain to mark the start of his visit here – meaning Theresa May won’t be able to avoid having to say what she thinks of his comments.
One well-placed Government source insists to me that the Trump/May relationship is better than it is portrayed.
But this source admits his telephone manner can be rather surprising.
I am told that, in reference to Brexit, he regularly starts their conversations with: “Are you out yet?
THE SUN SAYS
THERESA May must seize her crucial opportunity to save Nato next month.
Donald Trump is rightly berating Europe’s major powers for failing, unlike Britain, to fund their defence. But Nato is not some unfavourable trade deal he can abandon at a stroke.
Mrs May hosts his UK visit on July 13, right after he’s laid the law down at the Nato summit and before he flies out to meet Vladimir Putin. She must stress that lives are at stake. That the West’s security has relied on Nato for 70 years.
And that it would be a disaster for the President to undermine it now, with Russia an increasing global menace.
The Restoration of Parliament
THE restoration work at the House of Commons has hit a snag.
Some of the oil paintings, which need to be moved, are too big to go through the doors of the rooms they are in.
This means that the oil will need to be rehydrated, a complex process, before the canvases are rolled up so they can be moved.
This is another reminder of how difficult it will be to do these restoration works without going way over budget.
Gove shows uncustomary anger
MICHAEL GOVE has ripped up Theresa May’s plan for a new customs partnership with the EU.
To the surprise of officials present, Gove tore the document in two at a meeting on Wednesday.
After the Brexit inner Cabinet couldn’t reach a consensus on what customs relationship to have with the EU after Brexit, it was split into working groups to look at the two options.
Gove was looking at the new customs partnership, which is Theresa May’s preferred model and would see the UK collecting tariffs on the EU’s behalf.
Nearly all Brexiteers, including Gove, see this model as bureaucratic, unworkable and fear it will make Britain a far less attractive country to do a trade deal with.
Gove and Liam Fox, the two Brexiteers on the three-man working group, had made these points repeatedly in the six weeks of meetings they have had on the subject.
But on Wednesday night, when they were presented with the civil service summary of their discussions, they found these points had been downplayed to almost nothing.
Instead, the document implied the group thought the new customs partnership was workable.
Gove was livid about this and physically ripped it up to show he wasn’t prepared to accept the document as a summary of their discussions.
This flash of anger shows that Downing Street would be making a very big mistake if it assumed Gove will accept – and sell to fellow Brexiteers – any deal with the EU, no matter how flawed it is and how much it tied the UK’s hands for the future.
Customs will be one of the biggest bones of contention at Chequers.
I understand there is talk the model favoured by Brexiteers MaxFax might be altered to include tariff alignment with the EU.
But if that’s the case, then Britain WON’T be able to have a proper, independent trade policy.
One of the Brexiteers close to the discussions warns this is the “breaking point of what people are prepared to accept”.
MOST READ IN OPINION
May's battle plan to stay in her job
THERESA MAY is making it clear to everyone in government that she intends to stay on as Prime Minister after Brexit day, March 30, 2019.
Yesterday afternoon, Downing Street summoned the Government’s political advisers and told them to start working on measures to be included in the next Queen’s Speech, to take place in spring and after Brexit day.
A Downing Street source tells me: “As you would expect, the Government is focusing on a comprehensive programme of domestic legislation for the next session of Parliament.
This will include new plans for the country’s future outside the European Union.”
This Queen’s Speech will be huge for Mrs May.
It will be her last best chance to show her party she has a domestic agenda that justifies her staying on as Prime Minister.
- James Forsyth is political editor of The SpectatorPM shakes her head as Jeremy Corbyn talks about policies left out of the Queens Speech