Did chief whip reassure Theresa May’s Brexiter critics?
“You got it in the neck”.
That was about me, by the way, supposedly being lampooned by the chief whip Julian Smith in a meeting this morning with 40 Brexiter MPs.
They were expressing concern about the disclosure I made yesterday that the PM wants her cabinet to sign up for a Brexit plan that - if agreed by the EU (and that cannot be taken for granted) - would see the UK collecting customs for the EU, following EU rules for trade in goods and food, to include a substantial continuing role for the European Court of Justice, and offering preferential migration rights to EU citizens if UK service companies get preferential access to the EU’s market.
Smith tried to reassure the MPs that Theresa May’s Brexit plan would follow the Tory manifesto “to the letter” - viz the European Court of Justice would no longer have the final say on many aspects of law in Britain, freedom of movement of people from the rest of the EU would end, the UK would quit the customs union and the UK would leave the European single market.
There was harrumphing from those present - because they know that the PM’s Brexit plan, as described by me, is consistent with the manifesto in a technical sense, though they fear it breaches the spirit of what the PM promised.
Their suspicion, as you know, is that the PM is softening them up for their reviled Brexit-in-name-only.
A chastened Smith insisted “we’re definitely leaving, we’re legally leaving”.
Which was the gist of what May herself said today in PMQs.
All of this was shadow boxing, and will remain as such till the PM’s Brexit white paper is published next Thursday.
Then the Brexiter faction can judge if May and her officials, led by Olly Robbins, are showing due deference to their convictions, or are insulting them with ruses that make a mockery of what they think Brexit should mean.
And only then will May know if she’s averted a party civil war that could topple her and her government.