Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

May tries to sell her Brexit plan to the Commons – with limited success

Tory MPs offered a warmer reception to Theresa May’s statement in the Commons this afternoon than they managed during yesterday’s Prime Minister’s Questions. The Prime Minister herself seemed very confident as she explained today’s political declaration to MPs. That’s about as far as you can go when looking for signs of success in this afternoon’s Commons Brexit drama.

For instance, straight after the statement, we received confirmation from Iain Duncan Smith that he and other Brexiteers do still find the Brexit deal unacceptable and will kill it in the Commons. May had only minutes before praised Duncan Smith and Owen Paterson in her statement for ideas that they’d offered for the ‘explicit commitment to consider facilitative arrangements and technologies which could avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland’. And there was heckling while May claimed that the agreement ‘ends the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice in the UK’.

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