Tory party urged to ‘hold nerve’ on Brexit talks
‘End is in sight,’ says Raab as backbench pressure mounts on May
Government ministers called for the party to “hold its nerve” over Brexit negotiations as pressure mounted on Theresa May over her handling of the fraught talks with the EU.
In the face of a slew of lurid language from anonymous Tory MPs calling for the prime minister’s downfall, Dominic Raab, Brexit secretary, insisted the talks were close to reaching a conclusion.
“It is understandable that there are jitters on all sides of this debate,” he said. “We need to hold our nerve. The end is in sight in terms of a good deal, the prize we want.”
Suella Braverman, Brexit junior minister, said progress had been made in the exit talks. “It’s not time for panicking, it’s time for staying calm and staying focused on the goal which we are all on track to secure,” she told Sky News.
Eurosceptic MPs have reacted furiously to Mrs May’s suggestion at a summit with EU leaders last week that the UK might accept an extension of a Brexit transition period beyond the proposed date of December 2020 to help overcome an impasse with the EU over how to avoid a hard border in Ireland.
There was speculation that Sir Graham Brady, chairman of the Conservative backbench 1922 committee, could receive the 48 letters from MPs required to trigger a no-confidence vote in Mrs May’s leadership as early as this week. A potential flashpoint is a meeting of the committee on Wednesday.
Headlines and reports in Sunday newspapers reported unnamed Tory MPs saying the prime minister was entering a “killing zone”, facing “assassination” and “should bring her own noose” to the committee meeting. They came a day after hundreds of thousands of pro-EU campaigners marched through London demanding a second referendum to stop Brexit.
But Mr Raab told the BBC: “Now is the time to play for the team.”
He said he was “open-minded” about the possibility of extending the post-Brexit transition period by a few months to avoid the need for a “backstop” agreement on the Irish border that could see customs and other regulations imposed between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
“It’s an obvious possible route, as long as it’s short, perhaps a few months, and secondly, that we know how we get out of it,” Mr Raab said. “And obviously it has to solve the backstop issue so that that falls away then as a possibility.”
Ms Braverman, a Brexit campaigner, said fellow MPs were “free to express themselves in the way they wish but I am very clear that our party is stronger when it’s united”.
She added in a separate interview: “I don’t think there will be a vote of confidence in the PM and I am supporting the prime minister unequivocally.”