Brexit withdrawal agreement ‘95% complete’, Theresa May to tell MPs Theresa May is to say 95 per cent of the Brexit deal is settled as she seeks to quell mounting frustration at her handling of EU divorce negotiations. In a Commons statement on Monday following talks with European leaders in Brussels, the prime minister will insist the “shape of the deal across the vast majority” of the withdrawal agreement is now clear. But she will also reiterate her refusal to compromise over the Irish border, one of the key issues yet to be resolved with just over five months until Britain leaves the EU.Ms May’s statement to parliament comes as she faces growing anger among Eurosceptic rebels in her own party as well as calls for a second referendum on the final Brexit deal. In an attempt to highlight “important progress” since a fractious EU summit in Salzburg last month, the prime minister will tell MPs that agreements have been reached on security, transport and services. She is expected to confirm that protocols have been developed on how Brexit will impact Gibraltar and the UK’s military base in Cyprus.“Taking all of this together, 95 per cent of the withdrawal agreement and its protocols are now settled,” Ms May will tell the Commons. – Independent The hardest part of Brexit is to come but the finish line is in sight — and the deal will be right for you, your family and our country – Theresa May MP for The Sun …as she faces a Cabinet revolt after extraordinary last-minute conference call with ministers to shore up support Theresa May faced a Cabinet revolt on Sunday night after attempting to shore up support for her Brexit plans during an hour-and-a-half long conference call with her ministers. Esther McVey, the Work and Pensions Secretary, is said to have told the Prime Minister that she was “devastated” by plans to extend the Brexit transition period in a bid to strike a deal with the EU. Sajid Javid, the Home Secretary, warned the Prime Minister there must be a time limit on her customs backstop amid concerns that it could leave Britain indefinitely tied to Brussels. He is said to have directly asked the Prime Minister if she had “explicitly threatened the EU with no deal” amid mounting concerns that Mrs May is making too many concessions to secure a breakthrough. It comes as the Prime Minister faces one of the most pivotal weeks of her Premiership amid suggestions that Tory MPs are poised to trigger a confidence vote. On Monday she will attempt to reassure MPs during an address in the Commons, during which she will insist the Brexit deal is 95% complete. On Tuesday she will hold Cabinet, while on Wednesday she faces the prospect of a Eurosceptic revolt in the Commons and a “showdown” with Tory MPs, before holding a meeting of her Brexit inner cabinet on Thursday. – Telegraph (£) …but vows to press ahead with her own Brexit plan Theresa May vows to plough on with her Brexit plan, whatever it does to her Premiership. In an article for The Sun, the PM tackles her Tory critics head on to insist she will not be swayed from acting in “the national interest”. She insists: “I don’t think about what the implications are for me”. The PM also takes a big dig at hard Brexiteers who offer more simple solutions to solving the Brexit quagmire, saying she will keep on making “the right choices, not the easy ones”. Mrs May’s intervention comes amid mounting speculation that David Davis’s allies are on the verge of mounting a coup to depose the PM because of her Chequers blueprint for a softer Brexit. Tory MPs’ anger with her is spiralling again after she failed to strike a deal in Brussels last week but proposed a longer transition period instead. – The Sun Dominic Raab says he’s open-minded on extending post-Brexit transition for a few months Britain is open-minded about extending the post-Brexit transition period if it means the European Union drops its proposals for the so-called Irish backstop, Brexit minister Dominic Raab said on Sunday.“If we need a bridge from the end of the implementation period to the future relationship … I am open minded about using a short extension of the implementation period,” Raab told BBC TV. “It is an obvious possible route as long as it is short, perhaps a few months, and secondly that we know how we get out of it and obviously it has to solve the backstop issue so that that falls away then as a possibility.” Raab also said he thought a deal needed to be done by the end of November in order to get the legislation through the UK parliament in time. – Reuters > Watch on BrexitCentral’s YouTube Channel: Dominic Raab says he’s “open-minded” about extending the transition period to break impasse Suella Braverman: Government would be prepared to accept an extension to the transition period > Gisela Stuart today on BrexitCentral: We must not walk into the trap of an extended transition period Sir Keir Starmer says Labour could back second referendum if Parliament votes down Chequers Labour could back a second referendum following the ‘very significant’ march by protesters calling for a final say on Brexit, Sir Keir Starmer said yesterday.The shadow Brexit secretary broke ranks with Jeremy Corbyn to praise the so-called ‘People’s Vote’ rally, which attracted up to 700,000 demonstrators to London on Saturday. Sir Keir said last month that Labour would vote against any deal struck by Theresa May. The party’s official position is to push for a general election if the deal gets voted down.But Sir Keir yesterday acknowledged that Labour could not force an election – and suggested it may then switch to backing a second referendum. He told the BBC’s Andrew Marr show: ‘If there’s no deal brought back or the deal is voted down, then other options are on the table, one of which is a public vote. ‘And in that public vote no options are ruled out, including the option of remain.’ Mr Corbyn is reported to have banned shadow ministers from attending Saturday’s march. This was denied yesterday, but no shadow ministers attended. – Daily Mail > Watch on BrexitCentral’s YouTube Channel: Starmer: “If the deal is voted down then other options are on the table…” Steve Baker tables amendments to government legislation to stop Northern Ireland being placed in a different regulatory and customs territory Theresa May is facing a rebellion by more than 40 of her MPs if she does not bow to fresh demands from Brexiteers in the next 48 hours. Downing Street has commissioned urgent legal advice to determine whether the prime minister must face down new demands by the European Research Group that could scupper a key part of the Brexit negotiations. Steve Baker, a leading officer for the group, has put down amendments to government legislation that would stop Northern Ireland being placed in a different regulatory and customs territory from the rest of Britain without a vote in the Stormont assembly.The Democratic Unionist Party would be unlikely to vote for this, even if the parliament were not suspended, which it is at present. Sources in the research group said that the move was a conscious attempt to see off the backstop, the insurance policy demanded by the EU to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. It will be pushed to a vote on Wednesday unless Mrs May gives way — allowing the Brexiteers to show their strength in the Commons. The manoeuvre comes at the start of another challenging week for the prime minister, which will begin with her pleading with her party for more time to finish the Brexit negotiations by claiming that she has concluded 95 per cent of the deal. The backstop is the biggest sticking point. – The Times (£) Anti-Brexit campaigners to target 50 Conservative MPs in push for a second referendum Pro-EU campaigners have drawn up a hit list of 50 Tory MPs who could be persuaded to support a second Brexit referendum after more than 670,000 people took to the streets to demand a vote on Britain’s exit terms. Five government ministers are among the Conservative politicians deemed ”reachable” by the People’s Vote group, which is ramping up pressure on individual MPs to back a final say on plans to leave the EU…In a targeted push, the campaigners have set aside more than £100,000 for individual polls of more than 600 constituencies, sometimes at the request of MPs themselves, which are due to be published this week. – Independent Olly Robbins is being headhunted by City firms willing to pay him £1m to advise them on what quitting the EU will mean to them Britain’s top Brexit negotiator is being head hunted by City firms willing to pay him £1million to advise them on quitting the EU. Olly Robbins is the Prime Minister’s personal EU adviser and is leading the details negotiations in Brussels. He has been harshly criticised by Brexiteers who believe he is using his senior role in the talks and influence over the PM to force a soft exit from the bloc. But his role has also made him a desirable hire to financial firms desperate for intelligence on the Brexit deal following exit day next year. Mr Robbins has long been seen as a leading candidate to be Britain’s top Civil Servant, the Cabinet Secretary – a powerful post in Downing Street. His high profile role negotiating Brexit may have left him too controversial for the job. Working for a merchant bank or other City firm would also be vastly more profitable. The Cabinet Secretary earns about than £200,000. A source told the Sunday Times: ‘Olly has his exit strategy.’Every man and his dog in the City wants him.’ – Daily Mail /*COMMENT*/ Theresa May: The hardest part of Brexit is to come but the finish line is in sight — and the deal will be right for you, your family and our country None of this is about me. It’s all about you. That’s why, when I’m confronted with tough choices during the Brexit negotiations, I don’t think about what the implications are for me. Instead, I ask myself what it means for you, for your family and for the whole of the United Kingdom. Am I bringing back control of your money, your borders and your laws? Am I protecting your jobs and making sure nothing gets in the way of our brilliant entrepreneurs and small businesses? Am I protecting the integrity of the United Kingdom? And, above all, am I delivering the Brexit that the people of this country so clearly voted for? I need to be able to answer “Yes” to every one of these questions. – Theresa May MP for The Sun Jacob Rees-Mogg: Treasury so keen on wailing – it’s missed the true excitement of Brexit After the United Kingdom left the exchange range mechanism in 1992 it experienced the longest period of economic growth in its history. This did not happened by chance but because a failed economic policy was dropped and a better one put in its place. Monetary policy was loosened but the fiscal side was kept in check, at least until Labour started spending around 2000. Norman Lamont, as the Chancellor of the Exchequer when we left the ERM, made business taxation more favourable for investment. The same approach could be taken now as we leave the European Union preferably with a Canada style free trade deal or without any withdrawal agreement. Economists for Free Trade (EFT) have produced their Brexit budget report which outlines how this could be done and sets out some of the opportunities…The EFT forecasts that a £25billion Brexit dividend would be available from 2020 and a further £40billion from 2025. This could be used to cut the standard rate of income tax and leave plenty of room to fund the NHS too. The freedom to re-set our nation’s economic policy is one of the true excitements of Brexit. Every country in the world that has embraced free trade has prospered. What a pity the Treasury is so keen on whaling wailing and gnashing of teeth. – Jacob Rees-Mogg MP for the Express > Professor David Blake yesterday on BrexitCentral: The Treasury’s policy-based evidence making on Brexit has got to stop Brian Monteith: The EU’s single market is undeniably disadvantageous A report published today that I helped write, using official UK and Eurostat numbers, demonstrates that, rather than be vital to the UK’s export trade, the EU’s single market is undeniably disadvantageous. Gleaning similar Scottish Government statistics suggests it is the same for Scotland too. This runs counter to common consensus, but the economic data do not lie. The UK trades with the whole world and is the fifth largest economy as a result. Despite being a member of the single market and customs union it suffers a massive £96 billion trade deficit with the EU. By contrast it achieves a broadly neutral position with the rest of the world and enjoys a surplus with the US, arguably the world’s most competitive market – despite having no trade deal. Why is it that the UK can be successful in trading with the US – where we trade under WTO rules – yet have such a consistently large deficit with the EU where we have the equivalent of a trade deal through membership of the single market and the customs union? – Brian Monteith for the Scotsman May’s Brexit blueprint will trap Britain in EU single market-shock report – Express Peter Lilley: The Government’s Chequers plan is the Single Market by another name Language is important in politics. It can define accurately what we intend, but it can also be vague or innocuous to intentionally mislead people. Today, Global Britain has released a paper Chequers – the Single Market by another name to explain why the Single Market is not the success that is claimed, and how, by adopting the Chequers plan, we would be compounding its errors. The evidence in the paper shatters the illusion that Single Market membership has been an irreplaceable boon to British manufacturing. That illusion lies behind the Chequers plan to keep the UK subject to Single Market rules on goods. – Lord Lilley for Conservative Home > Ewen Stewart on BrexitCentral today: The EU is in structural decline – which is why we must not remain tied to its Single Market Times editorial: Deal or Bust Mrs May’s ability to avoid either a collapse in talks or defenestration by her own party has, over the past two years, surprised many. She has done this by prioritising political triangulation over realism. Three times, in writing, the prime minister has insisted that there will be no hard border on the island of Ireland. This can happen only if Northern Ireland alone remains in the customs union, or if the entire UK does, or if some hitherto unimagined technology is swiftly invented to permit frictionless trade from one side to the other. The first two options involve political battles she has not yet deigned to fight. The third is fantasy. If the prime minister believes that a good deal with the EU is still possible, she must cease her appeasements of colleagues who she thinks are hindering that prospect. If she does not, she should say so and prepare the public for a no-deal Brexit with consequences that her own government’s impact assessments suggest could be dire. What she cannot do is keep kicking the can down the road. Parliament, and the public, are running out of patience. Mrs May, meanwhile, is running out of road. – Editorial in The Times (£) Luke Gittos: The People’s Vote march changed my mind on Brexit That’s it. I am convinced. I went on the People’s Vote march on Saturday. I saw the 670,000 or so who marched through London. I’m now sure. We need a People’s Vote. Not a rubbish people’s vote like we had in 2016, in which 17.4million people, myself included, were cruelly tricked into ticking the wrong box on the ballot paper. No, a properly informed referendum. And by properly informed I mean a referendum in which we vote to stay in the EU. No other result could ever be considered to be properly informed anyway. A big reason I was won over was the placards. As we assembled in London’s Mayfair, a working-class Leave voting stronghold, of course, I was blown away by the level of banner bantz. Say what you like about avid Remainers, but they know how to pun. ‘Don’t EU want me baby’, one placard read, accompanied by a picture of Rick Astley. One simply read: ‘Lettuce Romaine.’ Fantastic. It is these kinds of placards that will win over disenchanted Leave voters, who are known for their love of middle-class, salad-based humour. – Luke Gittos for Spiked Tony Connolly: A brief history of the backstop The backstop was born on 8 November 2017. It entered the world weighing just 66 words, one bullet point of six at the bottom of a “working paper” circulated that morning by Michel Barnier’s team to officials from the 27 member states. The bullet point read: “It consequently seems essential for the UK to commit to ensuring that a hard border on the island of Ireland is avoided, including by ensuring no emergence of regulatory divergence from those rules of the internal market and the Customs Union which are (or may be in the future) necessary for meaningful North-South cooperation, the all-island economy and the protection of the Good Friday Agreement.” This innocuous-sounding paragraph was the infant that would grow into the single most intractable source of conflict in the negotiations. – Tony Connolly for RTE News Harry Phibbs: Meanwhile, good news from Gibraltar Good news is pretty much no news. But the comparison with Northern Ireland is striking. Imagine if the Irish Government had been as accommodating as the Spanish one? Perhaps the Gibraltar experience shows the benefit of the UK taking a very clear and firm stance and sticking to it. Spain ceded Gibraltar to the U.K. “in perpetuity” in 1713. In 2002, the residents held a vote on Spain’s proposal for joint sovereignty – it was rejected by 17,900 to 187. In that context, any concessions to Spanish opportunism would have been pretty outrageous. Yet in the EU Referendum in 2016 the Remain Campaign made a great effort to highlight the perceived threat to the Rock that a Brexit vote would represent. The message was certainly taken seriously on Gibraltar itself. Its residents voted Remain by 95.1 per cent to 4.1 per cent. These are people so fiercely patriotic that they are known as “more British than the British.”…Keeping open the land frontier between Gibraltar and Spain at La Línea is in everyone’s interests. So Spain will not revert to Franco’s policy – which, of course, failed to break the will of the people of Gibraltar. So on the island of Ireland, as with Spain, let us hope that there is agreement to allow life to continue as before, and that this story too has a happy ending. – Harry Phibbs for Conservative Home Faisal Islam: Guess who’s least prepared for no-deal Brexit? How can some EU nations have prepared more effectively for no-deal Brexit than the UK? The good news is that businesses are being prepared for the inevitable changes in just five months’ time – there are seminars and workshops in every corner of the nation, being attended by hundreds of entrepreneurs, some so popular they’ve had to move them to arenas.But, also being offered, are hundreds of millions in cheap state-funded business transformation loans, thousands in grants for advice, and personalised online impact reports. Even the hashtag #BrexitReady has been reserved.The bad news is that none of that is happening in the country logically most impacted by a no-deal Brexit – i.e. us in the United Kingdom. The above is what is happening in Ireland and the Netherlands. – Faisal Islam for Sky News The Sun says: There would be outcry if Vote Leave linked suicide to Brexit like Remainers A poser at the “people’s vote” protest joked that the Government appointed a suicide minister because of Brexit. One in four Brits suffers from mental illness. Suicide is the biggest killer of men under 45.This crass attempt at linking suicide and Brexit is shameful. We should be breaking down mental health stigmas, not mocking sufferers. Imagine the outcry if Vote Leave had been so wickedly vulgar. Alastair Campbell, who has bravely spoken before about his mental health battles, changed his tune about protests this weekend. The former Labour spin doctor dismissed the Iraq War demonstrators in 2003 as “full of self-righteousness”. How strange, then, that he now believes Saturday’s protest should influence government policy.What Campbell and the anti-Brexit brigade conveniently ignore is that there was a people’s vote in which 17.4million people voted Leave in 2016. – The Sun says Nick Ferrari: Brussels bullies lose the people’s hearts and minds The time (or should that be temps) has now arrived for Europe’s leaders to have a long, hard look at themselves and at the territories they attempt to rule – albeit rather badly. Instead of bullying, belittling and even barring the elected leader of one of their member states from dinner, they need to realise a contagion is growing in Europe that could make Brexit look like a minor rumpus at the village fete.That Theresa May was allowed to address her fellow EU leaders at their summit last week, but instructed not to dine with them, has to be the final insult.What don’t these arrogant, rude, self-serving, mostly male bullies not get? – Nick Ferrari for the Express Comment in Brief ‘Jeremy Corbyn can rescue us from Brexit bedlam’ – Kevin Maguire for the Mirror Mrs May’s 2017 Election Conservative Manifesto said only sign a Withdrawal Agreement if there is a good Future Partnership Agreement as well – John Redwood’s Diary The UK’s fatal Brexit mistake was failing to understand the true nature of the EU – Christopher Booker for The Telegraph (£) The Quiet Death of Corbyn’s “A Customs Union” – Briefings for Brexit News in Brief The EU wants to ban British Summer Time and Brexit might mean we can’t stop it – Mirror Why the UK hasn’t given up Brexit hope – Politico Liberal Democrats to begin process of selecting MEP candidates for European elections (despite Brexit) – The Independent