Theresa May will insist her soft Brexit plan is best for Britain in crunch Commons showdown with Tory sceptics
THERESA May will attempt to sell her soft Brexit plan to MPs.
The Prime Minister will dismiss claims the deal breaches her red lines on trade and immigration.
Mrs May will say: “This is the right Brexit.”
She is set to insist her blueprint is the only one that Brussels and Parliament will agree to.
Mrs May will also declare that the deal, agreed unanimously by the Cabinet at a summit on Friday, is the best for Britain.
She will tell MPs that the agreement will end freedom of movement, the jurisdiction of European Courts and vast sums of money going to Brussels.
The Sun Says
THERESA May could fatally damage Britain’s future – and that of her party – if she delivers a Brexit that fails to establish full control of immigration while giving us free rein to trade independently.
The Chequers compromise is bad enough — though we understand the necessity of this minority Government buying off the Remainers who dominate Parliament and who would kill Brexit entirely given the chance.
But many Tory MPs and Leave voters already consider it a complete betrayal. The Sun sees no further red lines she can cross without self-destruction.
So EU negotiator Michel Barnier and his puppet-masters Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron need to be very careful how far they push back.
Impossible demands will destabilise and bring down the Government.
Let’s be blunt. This fudge is the result of the PM’s dithering and failure to plan for “no deal” — that essential weapon of any negotiator’s armoury.
Had she won the 100-plus majority predicted before last year’s election things would be different. But her disastrous campaign put paid to that.
Michael Gove claims her Chequers offer would secure Brexit and free us to move further away in time. We are highly doubtful but we hope he’s right.
To us, a proper Brexit, which would have made us a freer, richer country and was backed by a 17.4 million majority, has been given up without a fight.
Remainer Tories MUST study the polls showing their party could now face an election wipeout as their core voters desert them.
Their sliding ratings will go into freefall if they vote alongside Labour this month to keep us in an EU customs union — a total negation of Brexit.
If Brexit is further watered down to meaninglessness, the Tories are finished.
And Mrs May’s legacy will be to usher in our first Marxist Government, bringing economic destruction on a scale beyond anyone’s experience.
And Mrs May will rubbish fears that proposals for a common rulebook with the EU for goods will restrict Britain’s ability to strike new trade deals.
But her plea for unity is unlikely to stop furious Tory MPs from accusing her of betraying voters who backed Brexit.
A string of influential Eurosceptics have vowed to submit letters of no confidence as early as tonight if Mrs May fails to convince them that her new blueprint delivers on the referendum result.
The PM’s carefully-constructed Chequers peace deal was at risk of unravelling on Sunday.
There is growing uncertainty over the future of Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson as Brexit Secretary David Davis resigned on Sunday night.
The pair refused to back Mrs May more than 48 hours after she unveiled the deal.
Tom Newton-Dunn's verdict
DAVID Davis’s resignation late last night is a hammer blow for Theresa May, but not unexpected.
The ex-SAS reservist has been undermined for months by the Prime Minister.
Mrs May has repeatedly preferred the counsel and ideas of her civil servant, EU advisor Olly Robbins, over his — a humiliation no senior elected politician should have to take.
David Davis’s fervent Brexiteer deputy at the Department for Exiting the EU, Steve Baker, following him out of the door is also very significant, as it now resembles the beginning of a leadership coup. In the past eight months Theresa May has seen her First
Minister, Defence Secretary, Home Secretary, Development Secretary and now Brexit Secretary all resign.
Normally, Prime Ministers don’t survive that kind of severe and damaging blow to their political authority
Can this one? We will know by the end of this week.
Allies of Mr Johnson defended his decision not to quit, saying it was “best to stay inside the tent fighting as there’s always the risk Brexit will get softer”.
BoJo initially branded the soft Brexit plans “a big turd”. He joked that anyone defending them would be “polishing a turd” but later ditched his opposition and agreed to the proposals.
Mr Davis rang the EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier on Saturday night to talk him through the details of the deal before breaking his silence and resigning.
Furious MPs have promised “robust exchanges” with Mrs May when they come face-to-face with her at a meeting of the Tory backbench 1922 committee tonight.
Eurosceptic Andrea Jenkyns said she was “100 per cent” ready to sign a letter to party chiefs demanding a leadership contest if the PM’s proposals breach her previous Brexit red lines.
Fellow Brexiteer Andrew Bridgen said he would also submit a letter of no confidence.
He told The Sun: “I wouldn’t support this deal if the EU were paying us.”
Ex-Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith said: “This is not what the British voted for.”
And scores of MPs said they would vote down the final agreement if it mirrored the current Brexit package.
One senior Tory reckoned that a no deal Brexit was now more likely, adding: “The Government has a serious question mark over getting this kind of deal through the Commons.”
Michael Gove said Brexiteers had won a key concession from Cabinet Remainers to “step up” the Government’s no deal preparations that would allow Mrs May to “contemplate walking away” from negotiations with Brussels.
The Environment Secretary, who led the Leave campaign but was the key power broker on Friday, escalated the Tory civil war by accusing hardline Brexiteers of “fake and mock outrage”.
No10 also angered MPs by gagging them from speaking to the media until they’d been briefed by whips.
Chief whip Julian Smith and the PM’s chief of staff Gavin Barwell held a frantic briefing session on Sunday and have scheduled a series of similar meetings throughout Monday to win over sceptical voices.
A rival briefing paper put out by the leading pro-Brexit QC Martin Howe was circulated around Brexiteer MPs.
On Sunday, before Mr Davis' resignation, Mr Gove admitted that Mrs May’s Brexit plan wasn’t “everything you hope for”.
But he told the Andrew Marr Show on BBC One: “I’m a realist and one of the things about politics is you mustn’t, you shouldn’t make the perfect the enemy of the good. One of the things about this compromise is that it unites the Cabinet.”
He added: “What we have done is to make a balanced decision. For 80 per cent of the economy we’ll be outside the EU’s regulatory orbit . . . and that provides a perfect balance.”
Six in 10 don't back blueprint
SIX in ten Tory members think Theresa May’s Brexit plan would deliver a bad deal for Britain and don’t support it, a poll has revealed.
Just 31 per cent of members said the PM’s blueprint would be a good deal for Britain, according to a survey by ConservativeHome website.
Eight per cent were left undecided.
A separate poll for the Mail on Sunday found 38 per cent of the public viewed Mrs May’s new proposals as a “sell-out”.
It found the Tories have lost their lead over Labour. Jeremy Corbyn’s party leapfrogged the Tories and now lead by 40-38 per cent.
Last night a member of the Cabinet said the PM planned to offer a major concession on immigration to win a deal with Brussels.
The unamed minister told The Times: “They are clearly going to compromise further.”
In another blow for the PM, leading Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg announced he would join Jeremy Corbyn's Labour party in voting against Mrs May's Brexit deal if it mirrored her current proposals.
And in a ominous warning to Mrs May, he suggested other Tory Eurosceptics would follow suit, which would threaten to defeat the Government's slender majority.
Writing in today's Daily Telegraph Mr Rees-Mogg branded Mrs May's claims that her Brexit deal complies with her red lines "misfounded."
He wrote: "If the proposals are as they currently appear I will vote against them and others may well do the same”.
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In a statement to MPs on Monday, Mrs May will try to sell her Brexit proposals by saying: “In the two years since the referendum result we have had a spirited national debate, with robust views echoing round the Cabinet table as they have on breakfast tables up and down our country.
“Over that time, I have listened to every possible idea and every possible version of Brexit. This is the right Brexit. This is the Brexit that is in our national interest.
“It is the Brexit that will deliver on the democratic decision of the British people.”
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