Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: Dominic Raab – ‘We need to hold our nerve’

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Dominic Raab – ‘We need to hold our nerve’

Andrew Marr was joined by the Brexit Secretary as the deadline for achieving a deal with the European Union draws ever closer. Marr asked Dominic Raab about rumours that the mood in the party is restless enough to trigger a leadership contest against Theresa May, with the influential 1922 Committee of Conservative backbenchers reportedly nearing the critical threshold of 48 signatures. Raab told his colleagues that now was the time ‘to play for the team’:

AM: What is your message to all of your colleagues who look at this and say ‘This is a complete shambles’?

DR: We’re at the end stage of the negotiation. I think it’s understandable there are jitters on all sides of this debate. We need to hold our nerve. The end is in sight in terms of a good deal… with the EU and I think colleagues should wait and see what that looks like… We won’t want to bring something back which we aren’t confident is a very good deal for the United Kingdom. But now is the time to play for the team, I think that’s the way we get the best deal for the EU and I also think that’s what the country expects from us.

On the question of extending the two year implementation period after the UK officially leaves the EU in 2019, Raab said that he was ‘open minded about the possibility… of a short extension’, which he suggested could be around ‘three months’. However, he added that ‘there needs to be something which allows us to control how long we are there for to avoid any sense that we are left indefinitely in a sort of customs union limbo’. On the death of the dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Saudi Arabia’s Turkish embassy, Raab dismissed the Saudi government’s explanation, stating ‘I don’t think it’s credible… We support the Turkish investigation into it and the British government wants to see people held to account’.

Keir Starmer – ‘No options ruled out, including Remain’

Marr also spoke to Raab’s opposite number, Sir Keir Starmer. On Saturday, central London saw up to 700,000 protestors take to the street to demand a ‘People’s Vote’ on Brexit. Starmer told Marr that in the event of no deal with the EU, the possibility of a referendum with Remain as an option was fully on the table:

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KS: We’re going to vote on the deal first. Obviously then there’s the question of a general election, then we move to the next stage… If there’s no deal bought back, or the deal is voted down, then other options are on the table, one of which is a public vote, and in that vote no options are ruled out, including the option of Remain.

On the government’s negotiations, Starmer told Marr that Labour would back Theresa May, saying ‘the Prime Minister is proposing is a temporary arrangement for a customs union. We say that should be the long term relationship’. He continued that ‘unless [the Brexit deal] satisfies our conditions, then it’s going to be a bad deal’. However, he did not confirm that Labour’s ‘six tests’ for the eventual Brexit deal would be in the party’s next manifesto.

Suella Braverman – Chequers is a pragmatic proposal

Sophy Ridge interviewed the Brexit minister Suella Braverman about the Prime Minister’s Chequers plan. Braverman, known for being one of the most enthusiastic Brexiteers in the government, gave the plan her vote of confidence and defended it against criticism from her former boss David Davis that the strategy was ‘just wrong’:

SR: Is David Davis right?

SB: I see Chequers as a pragmatic proposal. It takes us forward in the negotiations, it honours the referendum result in that it ends free movement of people, it takes us out of the Common Fisheries Policy… It stops the Common Agriculture Policy, it stops us being part of the jurisdiction of the ECJ and it stops us sending billions of pounds a year to the EU. For me… it means we can have control of our rules when it comes to services, so I am very confident about Chequers as a proposal to move the negotiations forward and I’m hopeful that we will strike a deal with the EU ultimately.

Braverman described the Northern Irish backstop arrangement as ‘an insurance policy in a last resort’, but said that ‘we have to resolve it’. She told Ridge that ‘we would accept a potential extension by a few months subject either to a finite time limit or a mechanism to extricate ourselves from it if it meant breaking this impasse’. Braverman also said that while a no deal scenario ‘wouldn’t be a walk in the park’, she suggested that ‘we can thrive in a no deal situation as well’.

Alastair Campbell – It is frustrating that Corbyn won’t back us

Ridge also spoke to Alastair Campbell, one of the arch cheerleaders of the People’s Vote march on Saturday. Although Tony Blair’s former spin doctor has rarely seen eye to eye with Labour’s current leader, Campbell expressed his bitter regret that Jeremy Corbyn did not take part in the protests:

SR: Doesn’t it frustrate you thought, that Jeremy Corbyn is not [there]?

AC: Yes, yes, of course it does and it frustrated me during the [referendum] campaign.

SR: Do you think it’s because he is a eurosceptic?

AC: I think partly it’s that. I think historically he has not been a big fan of the European Union.

Campbell insisted that in any second referendum, the option to Remain ‘must be on the ballot paper’, and argued that it was ‘profoundly anti-democratic’ not to offer voters a fresh choice. He also derided that government for ‘not meeting any of the challenges that led to people voting Leave in the first place’. Campbell defended himself against Ridge’s charge that he was as ‘self-righteous’ as the Iraq war protestors he had dismissed in 2003, describing the current situation as ‘very very different’.

Nathalie Loiseau – ‘We will do as much as the British authorities’

And finally, after President Emmanuel Macron had been warning earlier this week that British citizens may need to apply for visas to visit or work in France after a no deal Brexit, France’s Europe Minister Nathalie Loiseau sought to reassure British citizens living in France that there was nothing to worry about, as long as the UK government made the first move:

NL: Regarding British citizens living in France or coming to France, we want them to come, we want them to stay. But this has to be reciprocal. We have a high priority – this is the situation of French citizens living in the United Kingdom. We will do as much as the British authorities do for our citizens.

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