PM to make final customs union offer in bid to finish cross-party Brexit talks
The PM is expected to demand a final response from Labour within 24 hours
THERESA May will today put the fate of Brexit into Jeremy Corbyn’s hands by making a final offer of a temporary customs union.
She will order a trio of senior Cabinet ministers to enter the end-game in the cross-party talks with Labour, which will resume after lunchtime today.
Her deputy David Lidington, Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay and Environment Secretary Michael Gove will offer three major concessions to soften Brexit.
This will be a plan for to stay in a comprehensive customs union with the EU until the 2022 General Election, closer alignment with the Single Market on goods and a legal guarantee to copy EU workers’ rights.
But the PM is expected to demand a final response from the Labour leader within 24 hours to bring the lengthy cross-party talks to a close six weeks after they started.
No10 sources said MPs could get to vote on any Brexit deal agreed between the two sides as early as Thursday, but last night said it was “too early to judge” the outcome of talks with Labour.
Mr Corbyn made another hint that he wanted to strike a deal by acknowledging voters were “getting frustrated” at the lack of progress on Brexit.
But he is under intense pressure from his closest allies to demand a second referendum as a price for his party’s support.
STRIKE A DEAL TO GET BREXIT SORTED
Up to two thirds of Labour MPs are said to be against backing any deal without the promise of a second referendum, while Mrs May has been warned that more than 100 Tories would also vote against a cross-party deal that kept Britain in a customs union.
But yesterday two senior former ministers from both parties said they believed the scale of rebellion on both benches had been overplayed.
And they urged their respective leaders to strike a deal to get Brexit sorted.
In an article on the Conservative Home website former Education Secretary Nicky Morgan said the PM had no choice but to seek a cross-party deal because Tory Brexiteers had rejected her Withdrawal Agreement.
She wrote: “I believe when it comes to it, the majority of the Conservative Parliamentary Party will back her if she does.”
Former Labour Europe Minister Caroline Flint told the Today programme: “I think if a deal is struck in which Labour achieves many of its goals in that deal, that it takes us up to a general election in which all parties will be able to then set out their stall, then I think that is a deal that is worth pursuing.
“And if Labour signs up to a deal that includes those goals I think a majority of Labour MPs will support that position.”
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Ms Flint insisted there was not a majority among MPs for a second referendum.
Referring to last week’s local elections, Ms Flint said: “Across the North and the Midlands Labour took a hammering... those people voted in the referendum, many Labour voters, and others beside, for Leave.
“We need to show we respect their vote otherwise they will not listen to us again.”
The Sun Says: Custom split
NOBODY in the Tory Party should be complacent about the trouble they’re in.
A deal with Jeremy Corbyn — if it includes anything like a permanent customs union — could split them down the middle.
The muddling Marxist has been handed the reins of our EU departure by a Prime Minister who is in office but only barely in power. That’s some sorry state to be in.
The only possible pill that the country would swallow would be a customs arrangement that ended before the next election, allowing a new leader with fresh vision to get a mandate for a genuinely international trading policy.
Today the Prime Minister will be asked to name a date for her departure.
She has done her duty. But it is time for new leadership, before a Corbyn Government becomes an inevitability.
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