What matters most about Brexit is the destination, not how quickly we get there
The great Tory divide over the EU has been reopened by the election result and there are arguments raging, but that doesn't mean negotiations should be rushed
THE Brexit negotiations finally start on Monday.
When Theresa May called the election, she hoped that her winning a big majority would bolster the UK’s position in these talks. In fact, the opposite has happened.
She lost the Tories their majority, there’s renewed uncertainty about what the UK Government’s Brexit policy is and many in Europe smell blood.
The great Tory divide over the EU has been reopened by the election result.
Inside Cabinet, there are arguments raging about what kind of Brexit to seek.
“People are having another go at the old arguments,” admits one weary No10 source.
No one is being more vocal in this regard than the Chancellor Philip Hammond. Since the election, the Chancellor — who Mrs May would have sacked if she’d won big — has been flexing his muscles.
Leave-supporting ministers are furious about his behaviour.
One says that if Hammond succeeds in watering down Brexit then he will cause “a schism in the Tory party” and multiple Cabinet ministers will resign. He complains that the only beneficiary of this will be Jeremy Corbyn.
“He’s still smarting and feeling very sore about the way he’s been treated,” one senior figure admits. This figure says that Hammond is “articulating a strong Treasury opinion which never was that keen on exiting the EU”.
No10, though, insists that Government policy remains the same: That Britain will still leave the EU, the single market and the customs union.
Indeed, the Labour idea that the UK should leave the single market but stay in the customs union is absurd.
It would mean that the UK would have left the single market but would not be able to strike its own trade deals around the world, removing one of the biggest economic opportunities that Brexit offers.
But if the policy isn’t changing, the pace at which it happens IS up for debate. “That’s where the space is,” one senior Treasury source tells me.
One of those intimately involved in the Government’s Brexit strategy says that “the PM has always said a transition period is fine. But we can be more candid about that now”.
Previously, the aim was to have the whole transition wrapped up within three years, by the time of the next General Election in 2022.
This meant that the Tories would go into that campaign with UK budget payments to the EU ended, the UK fully in control of its own immigration policy and the European Court of Justice no longer having jurisdiction over the UK.
But there are now signs that opinion on this in Government is moving. When I put it to one of those drawing up the UK’s negotiating strategy that the transition might have to be extended beyond the next election, I was told “that argument is becoming more plausible”.
Allies of the Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson, who with her 13 MPs is now hugely influential in the Tory party, say she is keen on the idea of a long transition, too.
It would also help deliver the “smooth Brexit” that the DUP, on whose votes Theresa May must now rely, wants.
Leavers should not set themselves against any kind of extended transition.
As long as it is time-limited — and so can’t leave the UK in permanent limbo — and results in the UK regaining control over policy and the right to make trade deals around the world, it could work.
What matters most is the destination, not how quickly we get there.
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Tories queuing up to replace May
THERESA MAY has made it through the first week since the election.
But no one could say that her position is strengthened. In stark contrast to her words straight after the election, those inside Downing Street now accept that she can’t carry on as Prime Minister beyond the end of the Brexit talks.
She herself has acknowledged to Tory MPs that she is only in the job for as long as they want her.
But Tory opinion, from the Cabinet down, remains deeply split on when she should go.
No Tory wants another election because they fear it could make Corbyn PM. “If Corbyn can win Canterbury and Kensington without much effort, then he can win a majority,” warns one May ally.
The Tories also can’t agree on who should succeed her. Boris Johnson has his fans and certainly isn’t robotic. But he also has his detractors and they claim he has 350million problems following the Brexit referendum.
Amber Rudd has an almost invisible constituency majority and while I understand she does not regard that as a bar to her running for the top job, others do.
Then there is David Davis, who offers continuity on Brexit but who the party rejected 12 years ago.
“In the end, there is no alternative,” one Cabinet minister tells me.
But there are mutterings on the backbenches that this can’t go on much longer. One influential figure tells me, “If it were done, it were best it were done quickly”. May’s decision not to talk to any residents on her first visit to the Grenfell fire site has also not gone down well. “You can’t have that personality type and be PM,” says one.
One MP is telling colleagues that he intends to submit a letter of no confidence in Theresa May and is urging colleagues to do the same.
If 47 of them do, there will be a no confidence vote among Tory MPs. If May loses that, she would have to go as PM and would not be able to stand in any subsequent leadership contest.
EU would not like it DUP them
“WE should send the DUP in to do the Brexit negotiations,” is the new joke doing the rounds in No10.
“A large part of Europe would be handed over to us” if the DUP were sent to negotiate with the European Commission remarks one senior Downing Street figure.
Inside the Cabinet, there is concern at what the eventual price of this DUP deal will be.
Even those Cabinet ministers who are furious with Hammond about his behaviour over Brexit are glad that the Treasury is acting as a restraining influence on how much money is going to be pumped into Northern Ireland to gain the Ulstermen’s support.
There is a growing worry among ministers that the public will loathe the idea of taxpayers’ money being used to keep them in office.
“‘The optics are terrible,” one member of the Government admits.
BORIS JOHNSON is having a birthday party this weekend to celebrate turning 53.
But he is so worried about being accused of plotting that I understand the guest list is being shorn of political invitees.
Blaze made PM look weak
AS Home Secretary, Theresa May had a good record of standing up for those let down by the system, such as child sexual abuse victims.
But this is precisely why it was such a mistake for her to go the Grenfell fire site on Thursday and not meet any of the residents. She should have been there telling them that she would fight to get them the truth.
That she wasn’t suggests that either her confidence or her judgment has gone for a walk.