On Monday, Theresa May must return to the House of Commons and lay out her Brexit Plan B following the government’s historic defeat on her preferred deal. After losing that vote by 230 votes, even May’s closest allies believe she must propose something different to her Plan A. In that vein, the Prime Minister has been meeting with MPs from across the House in a bid to work out what Brexit deal can command a majority in the Commons.
So far the groups who have gone to see her have demanded rather different things. The Green’s Caroline Lucas is after a second referendum (the government has issued a one-page document alleging this would take a year), John Whittingdale and his fellow Brexiteers want no movement on the customs union while Labour MPs Yvette Cooper and Hilary Benn have hinted that they do. Each group believes May took their comments on board – yet she can’t take on all their ideas given that they contradict one another.
Perhaps then the most telling movement in the past few days relates to the DUP. The Times reports that two senior DUP sources have said the party would be open to a soft Brexit that kept the whole of the UK in a customs union with Brussels. This is not something you are likely to hear from the party Brexit spokesman Sammy Wilson, the DUP’s staunchest Brexiteer. What’s more, the official party line is to push for the backstop to be ditched and a cleaner Brexit to replace it. But it’s a refrain I’ve heard too in recent months from senior members. A number of whom say the party’s one red line before anything else is that they don’t want Northern Ireland to be treated differently to the rest of the UK. That means that while most DUP MPs would much prefer a clean Brexit, the non-negotiable point is anything that separates Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK – as it as seen as going against the party’s very purpose.
Arlene Foster has attempted to pour cold water on the reports today – dismissing them as a distraction. But if no backstop concession arrives, it’s not unthinkable that the DUP could support a Brexit deal that the Tory eurosceptics – who they have often teamed up with – could not. The question is: would May risk tearing her party in two over the customs union in order to get a deal through?
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