Sign up here to receive the daily news briefing in your inbox every morning with exclusive insight from the BrexitCentral team Key ministers warn Theresa May against ‘EU colony’ status At least five cabinet ministers have privately warned Theresa May in the past week not to sign up to a Brexit plan they fear will leave Britain in perpetual “colony” status with the EU. Dominic Raab, Jeremy Hunt, Sajid Javid, Michael Gove and Geoffrey Cox, the new attorney-general, have all told May that she risks making the government collapse if she signs up to a customs union with Brussels unless there is a break clause that allows the UK to leave at a time of its choosing. The ministers fear May is buying time with Brussels, stringing out the negotiations before telling ministers to accept the arrangement or risk the prospect of a damaging no-deal scenario. – Sunday Times (£) Labour accused of plot to sabotage Brexit legislation… Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell was last night accused of plotting to ‘sabotage’ Brexit by planning to slow down preparations for the UK’s departure from the EU next year. He faced claims from Tory Brexiteers that Labour was seeking to ‘frustrate’ the exit process by delaying vital legislation. There were also claims that, if Jeremy Corbyn came to power in an Election between now and the spring, he would push Brexit day back from March 29, 2019… The rush to get the UK’s laws ready for when the country is no longer subject to European legislation involves dozens of so-called ‘statutory instruments’ (SIs), not necessarily debated in full in the Commons chamber… Last week, Mr McDonnell said: ‘The SIs are now going through on a massive scale. Some are looking like major pieces of almost primary legislation.’ He said Labour wanted to get some of them debated ‘on the floor of the House as much as we possibly can so that MPs can take a view, rather than just having them nodded through.’ – Mail on Sunday …as anti-Brexit MPs seek to table “killer” amendment for a second referendum A new cross-party group of MPs plans to thwart Brexit by swinging the Commons behind a second referendum as soon as Theresa May requests parliament’s backing for a deal with the EU, as pressure mounts on party leaders to put the issue back to the people. Tory, Labour and SNP members say they will table a “killer” amendment in favour of a public vote. The amendment, if passed, will state that acceptance of the prime minister’s deal must be dependent on a public vote taking place beforehand, in which people would be offered the choice of leaving on the terms of that deal, or staying in the EU. The group, led by the Tory MP and former GP Sarah Wollaston, is determined to maintain the momentum from last weekend’s march through London by 700,000 people in favour of a people’s vote, by showing remainers that MPs in all the main parties are prepared to fight for them in parliament. – Observer Chancellor to unveil Brexit Budget to supercharge economy and unite Britain The Chancellor Philip Hammond will tomorrow deliver a Budget to unite a post-Brexit Britain. An unprecedented £30billion cash injection is set to overhaul our transport infrastructure and supercharge the economy with an expected £210billion windfall as motorways are improved, new A-roads created and rural transport links boosted… Mr Rees-Mogg said: “The Treasury remains the last Remainer bastion in Whitehall, and certainly these plans for our road infrastructure bode well for our post-Brexit future.” Citing three areas he hoped Mr Hammond would address to further Britain’s Brexit chances, he said: “The Chancellor must announce no tariffs on any goods that the UK doesn’t produce itself on March 29, so we stop protecting an inefficient continental system. I’d like to see VAT rates imposed by the EU on domestic fuel, women’s sanitary products and energy efficient products scrapped. Finally, we must show we’re open for business internationally by taking stamp duty back to 2010 levels, to encourage people to invest in the UK from abroad.” – Sunday Express Electoral Commission boss quits after claims it is biased against Brexit The head of the Electoral Commission has quit following a series of claims that the body has been biased against Brexit. Claire Bassett has resigned as chief executive of the elections watchdog, while three commissioners who publicly opposed leaving the European Union will also go. The commission has faced accusations of unfairness from Brexiteers, who claim it has focused on allegations of wrongdoing by the Leave side. But allies of Miss Bassett, who is joining the newly established UK Trade Remedies Authority (TRA), insist her move is unrelated to criticism of the commission. – Mail Online Claire Bassett to step down as head of Electoral Commission – Guardian Nick Boles claims senior Brexiteers are expressing ‘strong interest’ in a Norway-style ‘plan B’ for Brexit Pro-Brexit MPs are expressing “strong interest” in a “plan B” for Brexit that would see the UK scrap the planned transition period and adopt a Norway-style relationship with the EU while negotiating a new trade deal. Nick Boles, the former minister advocating a plan for the UK to attempt to temporarily continue membership of the the European Economic Area while it strikes an agreement with Brussels, said Brexiteers were seeking meetings with him to discuss the proposals, amid growing concern about Theresa May’s negotiations with Brussels. – Telegraph (£) Theresa May begged Jean-Claude Juncker to help her save her doomed Chequers plan It has emerged the Prime Minister swapped messages with the European Union’s most senior official as part of her battle to save the White Paper, which has been heavily criticised hardline Brexiteers in Westminster. She urged the European Commission President to give Chequers “space to breath” to help ease the domestic pressure, according to a high-level EU source. They revealed the message was sent prior to Mr Juncker’s in his annual State of the Union address to the European Parliament in Strasbourg. And the former Luxembourg prime minister obliged the offered and said he “would not kill off Chequers” in his speech. – Express Dover MP fires stern warning to Macron that Britain won’t be bullied over Calais Brexit threat Charlie Elphicke said reports that France will bring Calais to a standstill were “empty threats from the Elysee” and warned President Macron: “We know how to stand up to bullies.” The Dover and Deal MP said France and Germany could lose billions in trade if French officials resort to a “go slow” policy at the French port… “More than £120billion of trade moves through Dover’s docks every year. And when you add in Eurotunnel, the Channel ports account for about a third of the UK’s trade in goods. “This is good for business – and good for Britain. And EU nations do very well out of it too, selling twice as much to us as we do to them.” – Sunday Express Former Australian PM Tony Abbott secretly met Boris Johnson before savaging Theresa May’s Brexit plan Tony Abbott secretly met with Boris Johnson two weeks before his incendiary article savaging Theresa May’s beleaguered Brexit plan was published, it can be revealed… In his piece for The Spectator magazine , which was published this week, Mr Abbott accused Mrs May of toying with “surrender” unless she is prepared to go through with crashing Britain out of the European Union with no deal, a scenario remainers believe would have catastrophic consequences and even strident leavers concede could cause the ports to “seize up”… Mr Abbott’s meeting with Mr Johnson, kept secret by both parties until now, has been exposed by a Labour MP whom Tony Abbott confided in, not realising he was a Labour and not a Tory MP. – Sydney Morning Herald John Whittingdale: Please don’t keep us in Brexit purgatory for six years It was a proud moment in our history when the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union. But since that historic day, our Government has completely lost control of the negotiations and has been outmanoeuvred by the EU at every stage. Right from the start, we should never have agreed to the EU’s demand that we first agree the terms of our withdrawal before even starting to discuss our future relationship. By doing so, we threw away one of our most valuable negotiating cards – our financial contribution – and lost six months of vital negotiating time. Since then, we have become steadily more and more bogged down in endless talk about backstops, transition and implementation periods. It is hardly surprising that those who voted to leave are baffled by the apparent complexity of doing so. – John Whittingdale MP for the Mail on Sunday Quentin Letts: Britain’s wretched civil service is medievally enslaved to EU masters Unless Olly Robbins is an unusually flimsy soul, it is hard to believe he is badly upset by occasional raspberries in the public prints. I suspect he is amused by them. It seems more likely that Sir Mark Sedwill is using the matter to his own grubby purposes. So pleased was Sedwill with his Times letter than he took to Twitter to publicise it, ending his Tweet with a hashtag, ‘#brilliantcivilservice’. Good grief. This man has just been made Cabinet Secretary and he goes in for hashtags. A proper Whitehall selection board might have questioned him about such puerile behaviour. – Quentin Letts for the Telegraph (£) Martin Vander Weyer: Can Hammond’s Budget make business feel better about Brexit? ‘Uncertainty is draining investment from the UK, with Brexit having a negative impact on eight in ten businesses,’ says Carolyn Fairbairn of the CBI. OK, let’s pause for a chorus of ‘She would say that, wouldn’t she?’ But even if we shade off for ‘scaremongering’, her survey (of 236 firms) is bleak: ‘44 per cent of businesses with contingency plans intend to stockpile goods… 30 per cent intend to relocate production and services overseas… 15 per cent intend to move jobs…’ And I’ve seen no rival surveys that contradict the gist of it. So what can Monday’s Budget do to make business feel better? – Martin Vander Weyer for The Spectator Tony Connelly: Brexit: One negotiation, two worlds The Brexit negotiations are poised to resume, but there are now two distinct and highly subjective realities: the world of the negotiating teams, and the paradigm of Tory politics. If the process inches towards a successful outcome, it will only be through highly secretive negotiations in Brussels, accompanied by skillfully drafted statements, containing both coded references for the EU, and overt reassurances for Brexiteers. – Tony Connelly for RTE News Matthew Goodwin: The EU claims to be more popular than ever, but it is being slowly destroyed by populism The steady collapse of Europe explains why so few Leavers have changed their minds. Support for the European Union is rising outside of Britain, according to the European Parliament’s latest survey of what people think across the Continent. Perhaps the chaos of Brexit has prompted Europeans to suddenly realise what a wonderful club it was all along and fall back in love with the entire project? This is a very seductive argument, not least for the anti-Brexiteers who argue that Britain is on the wrong side of history and cheerily welcome the arrival of any negative news for our country. The only problem is that it is incorrect. – Matthew Goodwin for the Telegraph (£) > The Remainers’ caricature of Leave voters is wrong and shows they still fail to understand why people backed Brexit – Matthew Goodwin for BrexitCentral Dominic Lawson: Forget Sir Humphrey. This is Mrs May’s Brexit Yes Minister was one of the immortal comic creations of the 20th century, an inspired reworking of PG Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster, in which the servant is really the master — or in this case the civil servant Sir Humphrey Appleby running rings around the clueless cabinet minister (and later prime minister) Jim Hacker. Wonderful though it was, this endlessly repeated television series has a lot to answer for. It has persuaded many to assume that its satire is entirely realistic, that all actual cabinet ministers are putty in the hands of their Machiavellian officials. In turn this explains why such wide currency is now given to the idea that the prime minister has been duped by her EU adviser, Olly Robbins, into a Brexit negotiating strategy that meets none of the objectives of the winning side of the referendum: that, essentially, Robbins is acting as a sort of secret agent for Brussels. – Dominic Lawson for The Sunday Times (£) Brexit beats any other claim on this Budget Philip Hammond has only himself to blame for the fundamental problem with tomorrow’s budget. It was the chancellor who shifted the timing from the traditional spring to autumn, which means he has to deliver a programme for next year’s tax and spending five months before our scheduled departure from the European Union — when nobody knows what form Brexit will take. The expectation has been that the budget will be little more than a holding exercise with a new statement to follow soon after Brexit. – The Sunday Times (£) Comment in Brief It makes sense to keep Northern Ireland inside the customs union – Noreen O’Donovan Hage for The Spectator Is nothing free from Brexit? Oh please leave Strictly out of it, Vince – Barbara Ellen for The Guardian News in Brief Science Minister Sam Gyimah as he sets out Brexit strategy – Telegraph (£) No ‘white knight’ for banks in no-deal Brexit, EU regulator warns – Financial Times One million people sign The Independent’s petition for new Brexit vote – Independent