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From the Sunday Telegraph.
The scale of the grassroots backlash against Theresa May and her Cabinet over her Brexit plans has been revealed, as the Prime Minister is warned by her own constituency chairman that she must not concede any further ground to the EU. Cabinet ministers faced an angry response from their Conservative associations when they returned to their constituencies last week. Seven chairmen of Cabinet ministers’ Conservative associations told The Telegraph that they either opposed the plans in their current form or would withdraw their support if Mrs May offered any further concessions to Brussels. Richard Kellaway, the chairman of Mrs May’s Maidenhead Conservative association, said: “If it were to be diluted it would ultimately not be acceptable.” In a sign of a growing open revolt among grassroots figures, the chairman in Andrea Leadsom’s South Northamptonshire seat said the Government had “lost the sense of leaving”, and called for Mrs May to be replaced by a “statesman”.
The warnings come after Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, dismissed key elements of the plan signed off by the Cabinet at Separately, The Telegraph has learnt that David Davis, who resigned as Brexit secretary, warned the Prime Minister not to deceive the public over her blueprint. “On customs and on goods the paper was not in line with the Government’s core promises to take back control of its laws and have an independent trade policy,” Mr Davis is said to have told the Cabinet at the Prime Minister’s country retreat. “The Government should be up front that this meant the harmonisation of legislation with the EU and being a rule taker for swathes of the economy.”
Despite the warning, Mrs May went on to insist the plan would “end the jurisdiction of the [European Court of Justice] in the UK” and “take control of … our laws” – which No 10 maintains is the case.
In a new analysis, Martin Howe, a prominent Tory QC who campaigned for Brexit, describes the claim as “sophistry at best”, adding: “It is quite clear that the interpretation of the laws applying within the UK will continue to be carried out by judges in Luxembourg, with judges in the UK having only a subservient role. “What is even more alarming than the PM’s wholesale abandonment of her promises … is her repeated insistence in the face of reality that she has not abandoned them,” Mr Howe states.