Theresa May summoned her cabinet to an emergency meeting on Wednesday afternoon to sign off her long awaited final Brexit deal, prompting hard-Brexit Tories to call for senior ministers to stand up and block it, writes Dan Sabbagh, Daniel Boffey and Jessica Elgot in The Guardian on Tuesday evening.
The critical meeting is the culmination of months of negotiations and will see May’s senior ministers consider whether they can personally endorse the agreement that the prime minister has been able to reach.
Ministers were summoned to No 10 in the early evening and some met individually with May or her chief of staff, Gavin Barwell. They were given the chance to read the key documents, although they were not allowed to take any papers home. Further one-on-one meetings were expected to take place on Wednesday.
“Cabinet will meet at 2pm tomorrow to consider the draft agreement the negotiating teams have reached in Brussels, and to decide on next steps,” a No 10 spokesman confirmed. “Cabinet ministers have been invited to read documentation ahead of that meeting.”
Key elements of the deal began to leak in the early evening. The UK was understood to have agreed that an independent arbitration committee will judge when a UK-wide customs backstop could be terminated, comprising an equal number of British and EU representatives plus an independent element.
There will be a review in July 2019, Brussels sources added, six months before the end of the transition period, at which it will be determined if the UK is ready to move to a free trade deal; transfer to the backstop; or extend the transition period, possibly by a year to 2021.
Ministers were expected to study the Northern Ireland specific elements in the backstop deal. No 10 sources insisted the region would not be treated differently in customs terms, although Brussels sources said Northern Ireland would have special status in the backstop in terms of the customs union and single market.
Hard-Brexiters swiftly reacted negatively to the prospective deal – and indicated they intended to vote against it if it came to parliament. Jacob Rees-Mogg, the chairman of the European Research Group, said: “I hope cabinet will block it or, if not, parliament will block it.”
Boris Johnson, who resigned as foreign secretary, said he believed the deal was “vassal state stuff”. He said the UK would be bound by laws over which it had no say, which was “utterly unacceptable”.
Iain Duncan Smith, when asked if the government’s days were numbered, said: “If this is the case, the answer is almost certainly, yes, because they’re in real trouble if they bring back something unacceptable to their party.”
Nigel Dodds, the DUP’s Westminster leader, said the deal was not acceptable if it matched what he had heard in leaks over the past few days. His unionist party props up May’s government.
“We have to see the details of it, but it appears to be a UK-wide customs agreement but [with] deeper implications for Northern Ireland both on customs and single market, and as Jacob has said, if that means that we’re taking the rules and laws set in Brussels, not in Westminster or Belfast, then that’s unacceptable,” Dodds said.
But Julian Smith, the chief whip, said he was confident of getting the deal through cabinet and ultimately parliament once ministers had studied the document.
For the final part of this report, click HERE
