This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2019/oct/18/boris-johnson-launches-frantic-sales-pitch-of-brexit-deal-ahead-of-commons-vote-politics-live

The article has changed 7 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 1 Version 2
Brexit: Johnson urged to win over ERG by confirming no deal still possible – live news Brexit: Labour to back rebel Tory bid to force Johnson to demand extension – live news
(about 2 hours later)
From PoliticsHome’s John Johnston There is “no better outcome” than the Brexit deal on offer, the prime minister has claimed this evening.
A protestor dressed as Boris Johnson is now half way up the Big Ben scaffolding. Police screaming at him to come down. pic.twitter.com/eJvk3ZFDJi In an interview with the BBC, Boris Johnson has sought to portray the forthcoming vote on his Brexit deal as a chance to “move on” from three years of divisive politics in Westminster and beyond.
And Leo Varadkar, the Irish taoiseach (prime minister), has also said that MPs at Westminster should not assume that the EU27 would inevitably agree to a Brexit extension. Speaking at his post-summit press conference, he said: There’s no better outcome than the one I’m advocating tomorrow.
The position that we have agreed as the European council is that as things stand there is no request from the UK for an extension, if for some reason a request came, then Donald Tusk – president of the European council – would consult individually with all the European leaders to see if we would agree to such a request. I just kind of invite everybody to imagine what it could be like tomorrow evening, if we have settled this, and we have respected the will of the people, because we will then have a chance to to move on.
But bear in mind that request would have to be agreed unanimously by all 27 leaders, so I don’t think MPs voting tomorrow should make the assumption there would be unanimity for an extension. But our point of view has always been that we would be open to it, but it would be a mistake to assume that it’s a guarantee, given that it requires unanimity by all 27 member states. Johnson said he was hopeful the deal would pass in the Commons tomorrow, saying:
He also said although Ireland would be open to an extension to allow more time for the House of Commons to ratify a deal, there was no plan B. He explained: Look, you know, this has been a long exhausting and quite divisive business Brexit. I hope that people will think well, you know, what’s the balance, what do our constituents really want? Do they want us to keep going with this argument, do they want more division and delay?
Plan B is no deal, and we’re all preparing for that, and we’ve all been preparing for that since the referendum, but let’s hope that doesn’t happen. Critics, of course, will point out that Johnson’s own government’s analysis suggests his deal will cost the UK billions in economic growth and that the best outcome – on that front, at least – would be no Brexit at all.
Emmanuel Macron, the French president, has said he does not want to grant another Brexit extension. Speaking at a press conference at the end of the EU summit, he said: UK would lose £130bn in growth if Brexit deal passed, figures suggest
So that we can turn to the future I believe that we shall stick to the deadline of October 31. Asked about the deal he struck on the Irish border issue, the prime minister denied breaking a promise to the DUP, saying:
That being said, I’m not trying to read the future but I do not think we shall grant any further delay. I think that what you have is a fantastic deal for all of the UK, and particularly for Northern Ireland because you’ve got a single customs territory. Northern Ireland leaves the EU with the rest of the UK.
I believe it is now time to put an end to these negotiations and work on the future relationship and put an end to what is currently ongoing. In an article for the Times (paywall) Philip Hammond, the former chancellor, and one of the 21 Tories who lost the whip after rebelling over Brexit last month, says he will only vote for the PM’s deal if he gets an assurance that it will not lead to a no-deal Brexit when the transition period finishes at the end of next year. Hammond says:
Like I said, there shall be no delay unless there are some major changes. I haven’t come this far seeking to avoid no-deal in 2019 to be duped into voting for a heavily camouflaged no-deal at the end of 2020. But I am not a lost cause.
Under the Benn act, Boris Johnson will have to request a Brexit extension if his deal is not agreed by parliament tomorrow. For an extension to be granted, all EU states would have to approve, which means that Macron would have a veto. Any suggestion that he might not allow an extension is helpful to Johnson, because he wants MPs to think tomorrow that they face a choice between his deal and no deal. The assurance Hammond is seeking is the exact opposite of the assurance that the Tory Brexiter John Baron demanded in a BBC interview this morning. Baron said that he had received private promises from ministers that the government would be willing to default to no-deal at the end of next year if trade talks with the EU failed, but that he wanted Boris Johnson to say this in public. (See 2pm.) Hammond wants Johnson to say in public that he won’t consider this.
The intervention by Jean-Claude Juncker, the European commission president, at the summit yesterday, when he also said there should be no extension, was also interpreted as an attempt to help Johnson get his deal through the Commons. The People’s Vote campaign described the Baron comment as evidence that the government is planning a no-deal Brexit for 2020, but government insiders dismiss this as “conspiracy theory” thinking. They argue that Johnson would not have worked so hard for a deal in recent weeks if he actually wanted no deal.
In practice, although most of the EU27 are fed up of Brexit and want it over, it is assumed that, faced with a no-deal Brexit as an alternative, in practice they would grant a request for an extension from the UK. That’s all from me for today.
The court of session has finished hearing submissions on the latest legal challenge by anti-Brexit campaigner Jolyon Maugham QC, and Lord Pentland has said that he will give his decision by the end of the day. My colleague Kevin Rawlinson is taking over now.
Scotland’s highest court heard that Boris Johnson’s new withdrawal agreement to leave the European Union involves a “clear and unequivocal breach” of national law. Emmanuel Macron, the French president, has joined the Boris Johnson fan club, it seems. This is from my colleague Jennifer Rankin.
The basis of the challenge is that the newly agreed deal with the EU contravenes legislation – originally amended by hardline Brexiters to stymie the backstop arrangement – that prevents Northern Ireland forming part of a separate customs territory. Emmanuel Macron on Boris Johnson:"He is sometimes colourful...but he is a leader with genuine strategic vision and those who did not take him seriously were wrong." https://t.co/nFjSpQQekI
Sitting before Pentland, the court of session in Edinburgh heard from Aidan O’Neill QC that the provisions of the new withdrawal agreement make it plain that Northern Ireland would also form part of a separate customs territory, that of the European Union, and that this breaches section 55 of the Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Act 2018, which states that it is “unlawful for Her Majesty’s government to enter into arrangements under which Northern Ireland forms part of a separate customs territory to Great Britain”. Macron has changed his tune a bit from the days when he used to denounce those who led the Vote Leave campaign as “liars”.
Noting that section 55 – the result of an amendment sponsored by the hardline European Research Group - “intended to tie the government’s hands”, O’Neill added that whether Northern Ireland forms part of a separate customs territory after Brexit “is a question of objective law” and that it “can’t be plainer” that the UK government has acted unlawfully. Sebastian Payne says, in the light of Labour’s Melanie Onn saying she would back Boris Johnson’s deal, the PM now has a notional majority of two for his plan according to the Financial Times’ tally.
But Gerry Moynihan QC for the UK government argued that the petition was beyond the competency of the court, saying it was inviting the court to “inhibit” consideration of the agreement. “This is a manifest attempt to interfere with proceedings in parliament,” he told Pentland. He added that a substantial part of Northern Ireland’s trade would remain part of the UK’s customs territory and therefore section 55 would be complied with. And now there were 10: @OnnMel is backing Boris' deal. By our numbers, Boris Johnson has a majority of *two* for his deal tomorrow https://t.co/2DBWj354Bc
Moynihan also presented a letter from the Speaker’s counsel which warned that Maugham’s petition was asking for action that would “inevitably involve interference on proceedings in parliament and as a breach of the separation of powers”. Melanie Onn has become the latest Labour MP to declare that she is prepared to vote for Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal despite intense pressure at Westminster to oppose it, my colleagues Heather Stewart and Peter Walker report.
The hearing, which concluded just before 1pm, involved testy exchanges between Pentland and O’Neill, as the judge attempted to clarify whether the court was in effect being asked to prevent parliament debating the deal on Saturday. Labour's Melanie Onn declares intention to vote for Brexit deal
O’Neill said that he was asking the court to clarify the law for parliament, and that it would be parliament’s decision whether to then repeal section 55 in order to retrospectively validate the agreement. On the World at One Jacob Rees-Mogg, the leader of the Commons, said he thought Labour MPs in seats that voted leave might want to back the PM’s Brexit deal. He said:
Another “Spartan”, the former Brexit minister Suella Braverman, has announced that she will be voting for Boris Johnson’s deal. There are Labour MPs in seats that voted 60, 70% to leave and they will, of their own volition, regardless of anything I could say to them, be thinking about how do they best represent their own voters.
Just over a year ago I resigned from Government over the terms of the deal. I voted against it 3 times. Tomorrow I will vote to support the new deal secured by @BorisJohnson. This is about more than Brexit. It’s about integrity & democracy. Let’s get Brexit done & restore trust In fact new research from the British Election Study, which studies voting behaviour in considerable detail through an extensive database going back years, suggests that Rees-Mogg is wrong. Even in constituencies that voted leave in 2016 by large majorities, the people voting Labour are predominantly remain supporters, the research found.
The Tory Brexiter John Baron told the BBC this morning that ministers such as Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, and Michael Gove, the Cabinet Office minister, have told him that, if the trade talks with the EU do not produce a deal by the end of next year, the UK would leave the transition and trade with the EU on no-deal (ie, WTO) terms. Here is an extract from Ed Fieldhouse’s write-up for the British Election Study website. (I have highlighted some of the highlights in bold)
He also said a similar assurance in public from Boris Johnson would help to persuade hardline Brexiters (ie, the core of the European Research Group) to back the deal. He said: First, while 68% of Labour voters voted to remain in the EU in 2016, what about voters in those seats which voted to Leave the EU? Dividing countries in to leave and remain seats and subdividing by the 2017 winner, the BES data shows that in Labour seats where there was a leave majority, 60% of Labour voters voted to remain in 2016 compared to 76% in remain seats. In other words while unsurprisingly there were more Labour leave voters in leave seats, on average there was still a substantial remain majority. Even in those with a leave vote of greater than 60%, a clear majority (57%) of Labour voters voted remain in 2016.
All I can share with you is this: I am doing my best to persuade colleagues, the so-called Spartans who like me voted three times against Theresa May’s deal, to look at this in a favourable light. Because provided we can get that clear assurance, and I have been given it so far by people like Michael Gove and Dominic Raab, and I’m hoping to get it from the prime minister tomorrow, that we will be leaving after the trade talks, if those trade talks fail up to December 2020, on no-deal terms - as long as we can get that assurance, and I think we have done, then we’ll be supporting the deal tomorrow. Of course, Labour is not looking to win only the votes of those who supported them in 2017, and some people have changed their Brexit preferences since 2016. Rather than focus on 2017 vote and 2016 EU referendum vote we can use the BES to look at the Brexit preferences of all potential Labour voters in May 2019. We defined respondents who scored Labour on a like-dislike scale at least 5 on a 0-10 scale as potential supporters, making up 46% of all respondents that said they would vote and had decided how to vote.
Under the government’s current plan the UK would leave the EU legally on 31 October but then remain in a transition until December 2020, during which most aspects of EU law would continue to apply. Ministers claim that they will be able to negotiate a new trade relationship with the EU before the end of next year, but the withdrawal agreement allows the transition to be extended for an extra year or two years and most trade experts think that in practice this will be necessary because there is very little chance of negotiating a trade deal within 14 months. In an interview with the Irish Times last month Phil Hogan, the incoming European trade commissioner, said it would take him up to eight months to assemble a new trade negotiating team and then “a number of years” to conclude talks with the UK. Overall 70% of these potential Labour voters said they would vote to remain in the EU, with only 21% preferring to leave, with the rest saying they ‘don’t know’ or ‘would not vote’ in another referendum. In leave constituencies these figures change only slightly to 65% and 25% respectively. When we narrow this down to Labour seats we see little evidence to suggest that Labour MPs in leave constituencies who are concerned about their re-election prospects need worry more about alienating leave voters than remain voters. In Labour held sets with a leave majority the figures are almost identical: 64% remain and 25% leave. Even in strong leave Labour seats (where leave vote exceeded 60%) the number of potential Labour voters who would vote remain (62%) is more than twice the number who would vote Leave (26%).
But the People’s Vote campaign says Baron’s comment show that the government is not sincere about wanting a trade deal and that is is preparing for a no-deal Brexit at the end of next year. Fieldhouse says the view expressed by Rees-Mogg (also shared by some Labour MPs, who worry that a remain stance will cost them votes in leave areas) is what social scientists call “an ecological fallacy”. Fieldhouse explains: “Just because Labour voters disproportionately live in leave areas doesn’t mean that they are more likely to be Leave voters themselves.”
BREAKING: John Baron reveals the NO DEAL promise from Michael Gove & Dominic Raab that is making #Brexit extremists vote for this fake deal. They have no intention of signing up to a free trade deal before 2020. They want the UK to crash out out with No Deal. Please RT: The government has tabled two motions for the debate tomorrow; the first, approving Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal; and a second, alternative one, approving a no-deal Brexit. As this House of Commons library briefing explains, the second motion is only expected to be moved (ie, put to a vote) if the first one gets defeated.
These are from BuzzFeed’s Alex Wickham. The Labour MPs Peter Kyle and Phil Wilson, who have been behind previous attempts to get the Commons to support a confirmatory referendum on a Brexit deal, have tabled an amendment to the second motion saying a referendum should be held. They say more than 90 MPs have signed it.
No10 fighting to nail down votes of the 21 former Tory rebelsHad previously been thought most would come overBut now fears these rebels could remain in the high single figureshttps://t.co/LXj8LW5nu4 The amendment for a confirmatory ballot has been tabled for #SuperSaturdayIn the space of one hour over 90 MP’s from across the House signed the amendment...on a Friday! #KyleWilson #Compromise pic.twitter.com/hBQ8g1o8qQ
Tory whips balancing actSome Spartans not backing deal yet, asking for commitment to leave transition period on WTO terms if a FTA cannot be agreedPaterson a problemBut make that commitment and the former Tory rebels and Labour MPs will fall awayhttps://t.co/LXj8LW5nu4 Our approach has always been about consensus and compromise. Having heard from hundreds of MPs it is clear that most want to focus entirely on the deal as priority number one, not two substantial propositions simultaneously. Many want to vote on the deal before anything else
Some Spartans frustrated at Sammy Wilson / Ian Paisley Jnr / Nigel Dodds counter-whipping operation trying to get them to oppose the dealOne says Wilson in particular is being “annoying” and is hell-bent on no-dealhttps://t.co/LXj8LW5nu4 So @MPphilwilson and I have tabled our amendment against Motion 2.Should the deal fail to get a majority, MPs will move forward and be given the chance to vote on #KyleWilson.If successful, the House will have instructed govt to put any Brexit terms back to the people
The Tory Brexiter John Baron told the BBC this morning that Boris Johnson’s deal could make a no-deal Brexit possible at the end of next year, when the transition ends. (See 11.02am.) The People’s Vote campaign claims this comment shows that no deal remains a Brexiter ambition. It has released this quote from the Tory MP Guto Bebb, a PV supporter. He said: But, given that the second motion will probably not get moved in the first place, the Kyle/Wilson amendment will probably not get put to a vote.
John Baron let the cat out of the bag. He admits that he and many of his fellow ideologues in the extremist Conservative faction of the ERG are supporting Boris Johnson’s Brexit proposals only because they see it as the fastest way to fulfil their no deal fantasies. And Nick Boles, the former Tory who now sits as an independent, will back Boris Johnson’s deal.
Liberty has lost a bid to have an urgent hearing of its case against Boris Johnson over the Brexit deadline, the Press Association reports. Lawyers for the civil rights organisation argued today that its legal challenge, brought to ensure Johnson “acts within the law”, should be heard immediately. But their application for an urgent hearing was rejected by court of appeal judges, who said there was no need for an expedited hearing. I voted for May’s deal three times. I still want the UK to leave the EU with a deal. The compromise that Johnson has struck is flawed. But it is a lot better than no deal or no Brexit. I will support the motion as amended tomorrow and every stage of the implementing legislation.
Government lawyers said Liberty’s case did not need to proceed urgently, as there was “ample time” for it to be heard before the UK’s planned exit from the EU on 31 October, the Press Association reports. David Gauke, the former Tory justice secretary and one of the 21 Tories who had the whip withdrawn last month after rebelling over Brexit, says he will back Boris Johnson’s deal – but is backing the Letwin amendment too.
Mark Francois, the deputy chair of the European Research Group, which represents hardline Tory Brexiters, and one of the 28 “Spartans” who voted against Theresa May’s deal on all three occasions, has gone into No 10 for a meeting with the PM. On his way in he said: I have always believed that the best outcome to Brexit was to leave with a deal. I voted 3 times to leave with a deal.For me, the worst outcome was to leave with no deal. I’ve been prepared to resign from the Cabinet and lose the party whip in order to oppose no deal. /1
I still have some concerns about some of the specifics of the deal. So I’m going to go in now and discuss them personally with the prime minister. He very kindly granted me a meeting. And I’ll decide what to do when I’ve had a chance to put some questions to the prime minister. Any deal involves compromises. The PM deserves credit for being willing to compromise and get a deal.With the best will in the world and everyone acting in good faith, it will be very difficult to scrutinise and pass any legislation between now and 31 October. /2
From YouGov As an insurance policy, the Benn Act needs to stay in place. That’s why I’ll support the Letwin amendment.I have some concerns about the deal. Is there a risk that at the end of 2020 we find ourselves on WTO terms with the EU? That’s a very bad outcome. /3
BREAKING: Snap YouGov poll finds that by 41% to 24%, Britons want Parliament to pass Boris Johnson's Brexit deal. Two thirds (67%) of Leave voters want the deal passed https://t.co/2FZCSNZmE2 pic.twitter.com/PhQ4skIuFE But that is a matter Parliament can examine whilst scrutinising the Withdrawal Agreement Bill.I’ve been making the case for a long time that resolving Brexit was going to require compromise. Tomorrow I will back the PM’s compromise. I hope Parliament will back the deal. /4
From Sky’s Rob Powell The FT’s Sebastian Payne reckons Boris Johnson could now have a majority of one for his deal.
NEW: Brexiteer Mark Francois - who voted against May's deal three times - heads into Downing Street to meet Boris Johnson. He says he "still has concerns about some of the specifics of the deal" and will decide what to do after meeting the PM. With Graham Stringer sounding increasingly emollient towards the deal, that takes Labour MPs supporting the deal up to 9. So if all the ERG and Independent Conservatives are on board, @FinancialTimes analysis means he has a majority of 1 for the deal. https://t.co/LsCXL4tcLB
The DUP MP Sammy Wilson is urging Tory MPs to join the DUP in rejecting Boris Johnson’s deal.
Conservative & Unionist MPs must take a stand for the Union and join us in rejecting this deal. Internal & burdensome trade barriers will be erected within the UK without parallel consent from both unionists & nationalists. This is not Brexit.
Ian Blackford, the SNP leader at Westminster, told the BBC this morning that, if Boris Johnson wins the vote tomorrow, the opposition parties should unite to bring down his government with a no confidence vote. Blackford said:
If it does go through [the deal], we will be saying to the opposition parties that we have to come together. We have to remove Boris Johnson’s government from office and we have to move to an early general election.
This is a deal that if it does get support in the House of Commons, is going to be devastating for our communities, devastating for jobs.
Richard Benyon, one of the 21 Tories who lost the whip after rebelling over Brexit last month, has confirmed that he will vote for the government tomorrow.
I will be supporting the deal tomorrow
Many of the 21 will be voting with the government. They rebelled because they wanted parliament to rule out a no-deal Brexit, but many of them are willing to see the UK leave the EU as long as a deal is in place.