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Courtesy of the Sunday Times
Theresa May has been told she could be ousted like Margaret Thatcher unless she sacks her chief Brexit negotiator, Oliver Robbins, and ditches his plan to bind Britain into a customs partnership with the EU. David Davis, the Brexit secretary, has told May that she should ignore Robbins and start listening to her ministers instead — a move that the mandarin has interpreted as an attempt to get him fired. Davis also staged a showdown with May’s chief of staff, Gavin Barwell, last weekend, after The Sunday Times revealed that her aides had “war-gamed” whether he would resign if the UK stayed in a customs union with Brussels.
In what amounts to the most perilous moment for May’s premiership this year, a close friend of Davis compared Robbins to Sir Alan Walters, the unelected adviser who alienated Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet, setting in train the events that led to her downfall. The threat to May comes as leaked cabinet papers revealed that the embattled home secretary, Amber Rudd, was backing a plan to water down control of Britain’s borders after Brexit. The home secretary wants a “labour mobility partnership” in which EU migrants would get preferential access to benefits, healthcare and the UK jobs market — if it helps Britain in trade negotiations with Brussels.
May faces a showdown with her Brexit cabinet on Wednesday, when she is set to recommend Robbins’s plan for a customs partnership, in which Britain would collect EU tariffs on behalf of Brussels. Michael Gove, the environment secretary, told a dinner for the No Turning Back group of Conservative MPs last Monday that the plan was “completely bonkers”. Davis thinks it is “unworkable”. A close ally of the Brexit secretary issued a coded threat, warning May: “She should have a look at the history books and the case of Alan Walters. When prime ministers start following the advice of unelected advisers rather than her ministers, trouble follows. That way lies risk for her personally.”
Brexiteer business leaders today demand that Robbins is fired and “replaced by someone from outside the civil service who will take a tough line with Brussels”. In an article for the Sunday Times, Richard Tice and John Longworth, of the Leave Means Leave group, write: “At each stage, Robbins has presided over a bungled negotiating position on behalf of the UK, giving leverage to the EU and acquiescing to their every whim in a way no business person would do.”Davis say he has warned Downing Street it is no longer tenable for Robbins to devise Brexit policy behind the backs of ministers after he produced another plan — previously unseen by ministers — last Wednesday to sign an “association agreement” with Brussels, a move Brexiteers say will violate May’s pledge to leave the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. “Oliver Robbins has to understand he is accountable to the secretary of state as well as the prime minister,” a source close to Davis said.
Senior backbenchers threatened to submit letters demanding a vote of no confidence. “The prime minister would be extraordinarily unwise to take Robbins’ advice on this,” said one former minister close to Davis. “There will be a very swift and very violent reaction. It will put the prime minister in personal peril.”
One predicted that the MP Jacob Rees-Mogg could bring her down: “Jacob may not play the role of the king maker but he could certainly be the executioner.” Downing Street officials have placed Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary who also opposes the plan, “on a watch list” having concluded he is likely to resign this year. Davis’s aides yesterday denied a report that he has threatened to quit. “He is staying to fight,” one said. Layla Moran, the MP and a spokeswoman for the Best for Britain pro-EU group said: “Ministers are fighting like rats in a sack. The government has no plan and no clue.”