Tory opposition to Theresa May’s Brexit deal was beginning to crack today as Jacob Rees-Mogg admitted: “The choice seems to be Mrs May’s deal or no Brexit.”
The hardline Conservative, who chairs the party’s European Research Group wing, used a ConservativeHome podcast to signal his reluctant backing for her EU Withdrawal Agreement.
“The Prime Minister will not deliver a no-deal Brexit,” he said.
Asked if that meant the options were now “deal or potentially no Brexit”, he added: “That, I think, becomes the choice eventually.
“Whether we are there yet is another matter, but I have always thought that no-deal is better than Mrs May’s deal, but Mrs May’s deal is better than not leaving at all.”
(Image: WILL OLIVER/EPA-EFE/REX)
He later tweeted a link to the interview with the words: “The choice seems to be Mrs May’s deal or no Brexit.”
The move will pile pressure on fellow Leavers Boris Johnson and Iain Duncan Smith to switch and support her deal.
But Theresa May must also persuade her hardline allies in the Democratic Unionist Party if she’s to have a hope of the 585-page deal passing.
DUP Brexit spokesman Sammy Wilson last night blasted Mrs May’s “scare tactics” and warned his party’s 10 MPs would not be bullied into backing a deal.
He told the PM: “When are you going to stop using Northern Ireland as an excuse and do you realise that the importance of this agreement to delivering Brexit, and also to the union of the United Kingdom, is such that we will not be used in a scare tactics to push this through?”
And the hard Brexit Leave.EU group trolled Mr Rees-Mogg this morning, reminding him of his own comments claiming Theresa May’s deal would make the UK a “slave state”.
(Image: Getty Images)
Theresa May’s Brexit deal has already been defeated twice in the Commons by 230 and 149 votes.
She dropped a planned third vote today admitting there was not yet enough support. But she did not rule out bringing it back to the Commons before the end of this week.
If MPs can somehow pass a Brexit deal by Friday night, the EU will grant a delay to our exit date until May 22.
If there is no deal by Friday, the EU will grant a shorter extension to April 12 at which point Britain has four options.
They are leave with a deal, leave with no deal, revoke Article 50 or face a “long extension”.
Meanwhile MPs are due to hold “indicative votes” from tomorrow to weed out the least popular options going forward.
Brexit may now need to be viewed as “a process rather than an event”, Mr Rees Mogg admitted.
It was, he said, a “process of unravelling and diverging which will take time”.
