Theresa May’s Brexit deal faces ‘Titanic’ defeat as Tories join forces with DUP

Theresa May’s Brexit deal faces a ‘Titanic-style’ defeat, it’s been declared today after hardline Tories joined forces with the DUP.

The Prime Minister was handed a battering from all sides – Brexiteers, Remainers, Labour and the EU – as time ticks down to exit day next March.

Mrs May is expected to summon her Cabinet this week to agree a new deal to take to the EU for approval before Christmas.

But that deal then has to pbad a vote in the UK Parliament – and today key figures from all sides of the debate spoke out to warn it won’t happnen.

One Cabinet insider told The Sun on Sunday: “She’s like a ship’s captain who can see an iceberg ahead but won’t change course – even when members of the crew leap overboard.”

The row is over plans for a “backstop” – backup plan – to keep the UK covered by EU if there is no deal.

Critics fear this will drive a wedge between rules for Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK – and keep the UK tied to the EU with no clear way of getting out.

The blows to Mrs May today include:

• Tory Brexiteers and the DUP united, warning explicitly they will vote down the deal if there is no compromise over the backstop.
• Labour warned it will “stick to its guns” and vote down Mrs May’s “political hoax” deal as it stands.
• Tory Justine Greening vowed to defeat the deal – showing a fightback by Remainers in the party.
• EU sources also rejected Mrs May’s current deal, saying her proposed “mechanism” to quit the backstop wouldn’t happen.
• Jacob Rees-Mogg called for a ‘No Deal Plus’ – for the UK to cut its losses by paying £20billion for a transition but nothing else.
• The head of the Armed Forces declared “we stand ready to help” in a No Deal.

• Three more Tory ministers threatened to quit, following Jo Johnson who resigned warning of the greatest crisis since Suez.

Any unity of Tory Brexiteers, Tory Remainers, the DUP and Labour against a deal could spell defeat for Mrs May, a Tory leadership contest and a chaotic No Deal Brexit.

The Prime Minister has only a fragile majority in parliament and a coalition of critics could defeat her, even if they’re voting for wildly different reasons.

Today, in a significant move, hardline Tory Brexiteers and the DUP joined forces to warn they are ready to vote down her plans.

Ex-Brexit Minister Steve Baker, the deputy chairman of the Conservatives’ European Research Group, and DUP Brexit spokesman Sammy Wilson made the vow in the Sunday Telegraph.

“We share the Prime Minister’s ambition for an EU free trade agreement, but not at any price and certainly not at the price of our Union,” they wrote.

“If the Government makes the historic mistake of prioritising placating the EU over establishing an independent and whole UK, then regrettably we must vote against the deal.”

A separate letter to Mrs May, organised by the StandUp4Brexit campaign and circulated among Tory Party constituency chairs, claims the PM’s proposals represent a “significant blow to our sovereignty”.

An agreement that would leave Britain “trapped in a customs union with the EU indefinitely”, as current plans could do, they wrote.

They added it would “fly in the face of the referendum result” and risk “delivering a Corbyn government at the next election”.

UK negotiators hoped Brussels would agree an independent arbitration tribunal which would stop the Irish backstop being used to trap the UK in an indefinite customs union.

A Whitehall source described it as “the Government’s life-support machine”.

But in a separate development, the EU appears to have dashed the hopes.

A source told the Sunday Times: “By rejecting the proposal, the EU has just turned the oxygen off.”

That raises huge questions over what shape the deal will be by the time it reaches MPs in Parliament.

Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer vowed Labour would “stick to its guns” against the current plan, which he branded a “political hoax”.

“A choice between bad and even worse? Well, Prime Minister, that’s not good enough,” he wrote.

“There is no duty on MPs to surrender to a bad deal.

“The Prime Minister is unlikely to find enough support for her deal to be approved by Parliament.”

And Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry warned the PM: “You cannot expect the Labour Party to save you from your own backbenchers who say this makes no sense.”

Critics of Labour’s position say if they vote down a deal, it will force a no deal Brexit by accident.

But despite Jeremy Corbyn saying Brexit can’t be stopped, Ms Thornberry today insisted “all options remain on the table”.

She said Labour would try and force a general election, take power and deliver the “exact same benefits” as the UK enjoys now – something she insisted was “not a fantasy”.

Tory Remainer Justine Greening today led a charge of EU-backers in her party vowing to defeat the deal.

She told the Observer: “The parliamentary deadlock has now been clear for some time.

“It’s crucial now for parliament to vote down this plan, because it is the biggest giveaway of sovereignty in modern times.

“Instead the government and parliament must recognise we should give people a final say on Brexit.

“Only they can break the deadlock.”

Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg called on Mrs May to give the EU £20billion for a transition deal to December 2020 before walking away.

He wrote in The Mail on Sunday: “It is time for convinced Brexiteers like me to compromise.

“So at this late hour in the negotiations, we would like to make a new, generous offer to break the deadlock, to achieve a ‘No Deal Plus’.

“It would cost us money but it would finally dispel the ‘crash out’ Project Fear nightmare scenarios.”

Today the head of the Armed Forces said he “stands ready” for a chaotic No Deal.

General Sir Nick Carter, chief of the defence staff, told the BBC: “what we always do is make sensible contingency plans…

“We stand ready to help in any way we can.”

Sir Nick said the Armed Forces had not yet been given specific instructions but added: “We’re involved in thinking hard about what it might involve.”

Education Secretary Damian Hinds admitted there would be “trade-offs” in any Brexit deal.

He told the BBC’s The Andrew Marr Show: “It is not necessarily going to be something everybody is going to think is absolutely perfectly what they want.

“But that’s the nature of these things, there are some trade-offs.”

He also admitted the matter would need more compromise with the EU.

Mr Hinds told the BBC: “If you have too hard a line about saying, ‘well we must just have a totally unilateral exit, or an absolutely fixed, hard end date’, it is very, very unlikely that is going to be negotiable with the other side.

“On the other hand, people here rightly want comfort and they should be able to have comfort and confidence that it isn’t an open-ended thing.”