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Theresa May faces new coup TODAY after gamble to force Brexit deal through by offering second referendum backfired
THERESA May faces a new coup today after a gamble to force through her Brexit deal by offering Remainers a second referendum backfired spectacularly.
The offer was blasted by MPs on all sides — and left Brexiteers seething at her “betrayal”.
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Senior Tory backbenchers will now try to force a confidence vote in the PM when the party’s grandees meet at 4pm on Wednesday.
Brexiteer Nigel Evans said: “She has U-turned on absolutely everything. We cannot put up with this any longer.
“I will be asking my colleagues tomorrow to agree to a rule change so we can hold an immediate confidence vote if Theresa is not prepared to stand down now.”
The new revolt comes after Mrs May offered Remainers in Parliament the chance of a “confirmatory vote” if they agree to pass her EU divorce “new deal” in two weeks’ time.
Mrs May said it gave MPs “one last chance” to deliver on the 2016 referendum result. She said failing to take it would lead to a “nightmare future of permanently polarised politics”.
The PM added that if they refused they risked Brexit “slipping away from us”. But No10 was shaken by the overwhelmingly negative reaction by MPs on all sides.
CONFIDENCE VOTE BID
The executive of the Tories’ 1922 Committee will be urged Wednesday afternoon to change party rules to enable a new confidence vote on Mrs May.
She won a previous vote in December and current rules say she cannot be challenged again for 12 months.
Labour and Tory MPs have queued up to dismiss the deal.
By 8pm, at least 21 Conservatives who had previously backed the PM’s deal announced they would switch their vote and oppose it.
Former Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab became the first major Tory leadership contender to say he will vote down the new plan.
He tweeted: “I cannot support legislation that would be the vehicle for a second referendum or customs union.”
We can and must do better - and deliver what the people voted for
Boris Johnson
Boris Johnson swiftly followed suit, saying the offers were “directly against our manifesto” and added: “We can and must do better — and deliver what the people voted for”.
And another Tory switcher, Ben Bradley, delivered an astonishing attack on Mrs May.
He tweeted: “It’s simply not good enough to abdicate all responsibility for the type of Brexit we end up with.
“You are the Prime Minister. You can’t stand there and say ‘I do not support a second referendum, but Parliament would like one so I’ll just go along with it’. You are meant to LEAD!”
Labour boss Jeremy Corbyn was also dismissive, calling it a “rehash of the Government’s position in the cross-party talks”. But he stopped short of saying his party would vote against the offer.
However, Labour MP and People’s Vote supporter Peter Kyle called Mrs May’s pledges “a whole load of promises on behalf of the next PM”. He added: “No thanks.”
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Mrs May’s second controversial offer was another vote for MPs on what new customs system to adopt after Brexit when her Withdrawal Agreement Bill is voted on again in the Commons in two weeks.
They will be asked to choose between her original plan — a close alignment with the EU on goods but an independent trade policy — and a temporary customs union until a General Election in 2022.
Privately, some Cabinet ministers had written off Mrs May’s chances of success before she had delivered her speech, with one calling it “the last roll of the dice”.
Asked if they thought the offer was doomed, one minister quoted House of Cards’ Francis Urquhart by saying: “You may very well think so, I couldn’t possibly say.”
They added: “My estimate is we’ll bring over 15 Labour MPs tops — and we’ll get hammered by our own side.”
Even senior No10 figures admitted the new deal was a big gamble.
MAY'S CRISIS ESCALATES
One told The Sun: “It feels like checkmate now. They’re all too deep in the trenches to listen to anything she has to say now. We really have nowhere else to go.”
Among her other offers, the PM promised the DUP that the rest of the UK will stay aligned with Northern Ireland on regulations, as well as a veto on any move to change the current relationship with the Stormont Assembly.
Tory Brexiteers were given a legal undertaking to force Government to “seek” to have alternative arrangements in place on the Irish border by December 2020 so there was no need for the backstop.
And wavering Labour MPs were pledged a vote to approve negotiating objectives on a trade deal, a new Workers’ Rights Bill to mirror EU protections and no change in environmental protection levels.
Senior ministers only signed off on her plan after a blazing row on how far to go on the referendum offer during a “lively” three-hour Cabinet meeting on Tuesday.
Mrs May later conceded delivering Brexit had been “even harder than I anticipated”. She faces a fresh mauling on Wednesday when she lays out her plan in the Commons.
MOST READ IN POLITICS
Mrs May’s gamble came as:
- At least one senior minister was said to be close to quitting during a row with Mrs May.
- Downing Street deepened Tory Brexiteers’ anger by keeping on the table the option of giving ministers a free vote on a second referendum.
- Tory leadership contenders stepped up their pitches.
- It emerged Sajid Javid wants to rip up a minimum salary threshold for new EU immigrants after Brexit.
The Sun Says
THE barrage of abuse from all sides over Theresa May’s final desperate capitulation tells its own story.
No wonder her Leave MPs are screaming blue murder.
She has already welched on almost every promise.
Now, after all she has said, she has even offered the second referendum mob a binding chance to engineer Brexit’s destruction.
For good measure she has caved to a string of Labour demands that, if Brexit happened, would shackle us so tightly to the EU it would look all but pointless.
It still isn’t enough for Corbyn’s party. Nothing could be. Their sole interest is in wrecking the Tories.
Nor is it enough even for “people’s vote” Remainers. They don’t want to risk a Commons vote they could lose.
They demand to be GIVEN their second referendum, against the wishes of MPs and the public.
At least the PM didn’t go that far. But she should not have budged an inch.
A second vote before the first is enacted would be a grotesque abuse of democracy, enough to destroy public faith in it for a generation.
Mrs May is presumably confident a majority of MPs would reject it. That’s irrelevant. It is political suicide.
Leave voters now see Tories as the party that botched Brexit, then surrendered over a “people’s vote” and promised to legislate for it if approved.
We respect that Mrs May, in the dying days of her disastrous rule and with no majority, tried to unite MPs around a compromise.
But by tossing baubles at entrenched and utterly opposed sides she has simply alienated them all.
What a gift this doomed gambit is for Nigel Farage, his Brexit Party already riding high before the euro elections.
And what a terrifying catastrophe for the Tories: for the PM who negotiated ineptly, the Remainers who shamefully sabotaged our position and the backbench ERG Brexiteers whose purism defeated the only available deal.
We warned them then that Brexit would only get softer with their party left to plummet into the abyss.
We were right.
Their time may soon be up. Theresa’s is already.
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