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From the Sunday Times - The PM looks to be in a winning position.
Theresa May will tell Conservative MPs this week to back her or risk never leaving the EU, after she was warned that if her Brexit deal falls, parliament would have the power to delay the UK’s departure indefinitely. The prime minister will tell Brexiteers they have until Thursday to support her or risk a “collective political failure” in the form of a “Hotel California Brexit” where “you can check out, but you can never leave”. Advice from officials, leaked to The Sunday Times, says that if the deal fails to pass and the prime minister is forced to request an extension of article 50, Britain would have to hold EU elections and MPs would then be able to impose limitless delays on departure from the EU. The warning comes as senior Eurosceptics signalled they may swing behind the deal. Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader, told friends that Brexiteers should “jump together” if the Democratic Unionist Party supports the deal.
In a further boost for May, Matthew Elliott, one of the architects of the leave campaign, urged MPs to get behind her. Writing in The Sunday Times, he said: “If MPs vote down the withdrawal agreement for a third time this week, Brexit probably won’t happen. But if MPs do allow the vote to pass, we will leave in a matter of weeks . . . We will be free from the EU’s political institutions by the summer.”
Jacob Rees-Mogg, leader of the European Research Group, is privately keen to get on board and is urging Boris Johnson to join him. Another MP, Daniel Kawczynski, said yesterday he would change his vote because the “mood in my constituency is now changing quickly” and “we may lose Brexit”.
The prime minister is planning a third attempt to get MPs to approve the deal on Tuesday before an EU summit in Brussels on Thursday.
If the deal passes, No 10 officials say the necessary legislation will have cleared the Commons by April 25, paving the way for a new Brexit Day in the final week of May or first week of June. But if the deal fails, May will be forced to request a long extension of article 50 and hold EU elections, at a cost of £100m. Last night May said: “The idea of the British people going to the polls to elect MEPs three years after voting to leave the EU hardly bears thinking about. There could be no more potent symbol of parliament’s collective political failure.” The leaked advice, circulating in Downing Street, reads: “Once the UK has taken part in the EU elections, there is effectively no limit to the number of extensions of article 50 the UK can ask for or be required to ask for by parliament.” A senior source said: “We could be in the EU forever.”
The same message was passed by the European Commission to ambassadors in Brussels on Friday. They were told: “It is possible that there is more than one extension.” In an effort to drum up more support, two of May’s most senior aides and at least four whips have sounded out MPs about whether they would vote for the deal if the prime minister agrees to resign. Grant Shapps, a former party co-chairman, endorsed the plan: “The next stage of the negotiations around Britain’s future partnership with the EU will require a complete change of the negotiating team from bottom to top.”
May is at the mercy of a “gang of 15” Brexiteer MPs who won’t budge, including a “suicide squad” of around 10 plotting to vote with Labour in any no-confidence motion. If the Tories lost such a vote they would have 14 days to install a new leader or Jeremy Corbyn could become prime minister.
Corbyn will host cross-party talks tomorrow to thrash out an alternative soft Brexit plan, likely to commit Britain to permanent membership of the single market and customs union.
One of the Tories he has invited, Nick Boles, resigned yesterday from his Grantham and Stamford constituency party, saying that the “values and views” of local activists demanding a no-deal Brexit were “at odds with my own”. May will offer the DUP a new deal tomorrow, including a “Stormont lock” clause in the UK’s withdrawal legislation to ensure EU regulations imposed on Northern Ireland would be adopted in the rest of the UK, or rejected in both. There will also be a “clarification” but not a “rewrite” of attorney-general Geoffrey Cox’s legal advice. Ministers expect to funnel another £1bn to the province — but only after the deal passes, so it does not appear to be a bribe.