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Tory truce frays as Brussels highlights no-deal risk


Theresa May’s latest attempt to salvage her stricken Brexit deal was in more trouble on Monday, as a senior EU official warned that a disorderly no-deal exit was looming and an uneasy Tory truce broke down.

Mrs May will travel to Northern Ireland on Tuesday and to Brussels later in the week as she tries to build support for a revamped Brexit deal, but senior Tories admitted there was little chance of an early breakthrough.

The UK prime minister last week used the promise of extracting concessions from Brussels to quell a mutinous mood among Eurosceptic Conservative MPs, but has found few diplomatic avenues to pursue in Europe even as tensions within the Tory ranks re-emerge.

Downing Street’s spirits were lifted when German chancellor Angela Merkel — seen in London as one of the more supportive EU leaders on Brexit — said both sides had to be “creative and listen to each other ” to solve the contentious Irish backstop, a measure that Brexiters complain could indefinitely trap the UK in a customs union with Brussels.

But Ms Merkel said she did not want to reopen the withdrawal agreement — which includes the backstop — and that concerns could be addressed instead through separate talks on the future UK/EU relationship.

Mrs May’s spokeswoman said of Ms Merkel’s comments: “I think it reflects the fact that we want to leave with a deal, and it needs the co-operation of both sides to do that.”

Ms Merkel’s insistence that the draft withdrawal treaty should not be reopened is a warning shot to Tory Eurosceptics, who want the backstop — an insurance policy against a hard border in Ireland — removed from the text altogether.

Martin Selmayr, chief of staff to European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker, suggested to a delegation of British MPs that Mrs May had not even formally asked to reopen negotiations, according to one of those present.

Mr Selmayr added there was no appetite in Brussels for legally binding assurances on the temporary nature of the backstop.

“On the EU side, nobody is considering this,” Mr Selmayr said after meeting the Brexit committee, adding: “The meeting confirmed that the EU did well to start its no-deal preparations in December 2017.”

The comments added to a widely held view in Westminster that Mrs May’s Brexit strategy is becalmed, as Brexit day on March 29 beckons. “There seems to be no movement at all,” admitted one minister.

But after the Conservatives’ show of unity last week — when the prime minister won a crucial vote in the House of Commons — her deal is again coming under bitter criticism from the party’s MPs.

In a Daily Telegraph column, Boris Johnson, the former foreign secretary, criticised not only the backstop, but the “staggering” exit bill of more than £39bn, the “protracted and humiliating” transition set to last until at least the end of 2020, and Mrs May’s “bonkers” plans for future relations with the EU.

Downing Street said the prime minister was “urgently” seeking new proposals to present in Brussels to address Eurosceptic Tory and Democratic Unionist party concerns about the backstop.

On Monday Brexit minister Steve Barclay convened the first meeting of a group of Tory MPs — Brexiters Steve Baker, Owen Paterson and Marcus Fysh and pro-Europeans Damian Green and Nicky Morgan — to find ways to replace the backstop.

Mrs May claims the so-called alternative arrangements working group reflects a willingness of Tories of all views to find constructive solutions, but it was described by pro-EU former universities minister Sam Gyimah as “fantasy politics”.

The group is exploring ideas originally proposed by Kit Malthouse, housing minister, to use technology and other methods — such as so-called trusted-trader schemes to reduce paperwork — to eliminate the need for a hard border in Ireland.

But both Brussels points out that such border technology does not yet exist, suggesting the idea of technological facilitation — rejected as unworkable by the prime minister herself last year — will be dead on arrival in Brussels.

Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, suggested that the EU would only work on alternatives once the withdrawal treaty was settled.

After a meeting with Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister, he tweeted. “Backstop = only operational solution to address Irish border issue today. EU ready to work on alternative solutions during transition.”

Meanwhile, pro-European Tories are scathing about the decision of Mr Green and Ms Morgan to sign up to the Malthouse initiative which they believe is playing into the hands of Tory Eurosceptics — since it was destined to fail.

Some claimed the two former cabinet ministers were trying to work their way back into Mrs May’s favour: “Gissa job,” joked one Tory MP. Mr Green and Ms Morgan argue they are trying to build a Tory consensus on a way forward.

Eurosceptics warned that unless Mrs May persuaded the EU to adopt the Malthouse proposal and scrap the backstop — something that Brussels has repeatedly ruled out — they would vote down any deal.

They said that one possible concession Brussels could make without rewriting the treaty text — a legally-binding assurance about the temporary nature of the backstop, also known as a so-called “interpretative instrument” — was not enough. “Some in government say that’s all we will get from the EU,” said Bernard Jenkin, a veteran Eurosceptic. “It won’t get past the House of Commons.”





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