Afternoon summary
- Jeremy Hunt, the foreign secretary, has said he is confident that the UK and the EU will reach a Brexit deal within three weeks. (See 11.47am.) He spoke as an Austrian news organisation (Austria currently holds the presidency of the EU) said an emergency EU summit could take place on Sunday 25 November to finalise the deal. (See 2.09pm.) But a European commissioner, Phil Hogan, has said he does not expect an agreement until December. (See 1.54pm.)
- Dominic Raab, the Brexit secretary, has been branded “clueless” after admitting he did not fully understand the importance of the Dover-Calais border to the UK economy. (See 9.25am and 3.17pm.)
- David Davis, the former Brexit secretary, has said MPs should vote down May’s Brexit deal because that would force the EU to make a better offer. (See 9.03am.)
- Women MPs from around the world have been debating in the House of Commons chamber during the first women MPs of the world conference. (See 3.42pm.)
That’s all from me for today.
Thanks for the comments.
Updated
This morning David Davis, the former Brexit secretary, suggested that the Commons would vote down Theresa May’s Brexit deal. That would prompt a renegotiation, he said, implying that a revised deal would then get approved by MPs. (See 9.03am.)
Rupert Harrison, who was chief of staff to George Osborne in the Treasury, also thinks that getting the Brexit deal through the Commons will end up being a two-state process.
Quick Brexit punt: my view all along has been there would be a deal - still feeling ok about that. But starting to wonder if Parliamentary vote will be like TARP in the US in 2008 - voted down, markets puke, passes second time with small changes... would make for a bumpy ride!
— Rupert Harrison (@rbrharrison) November 8, 2018
(Reminder - this is what happened when congress voted down the bailout.)
But Davis was implying that, in the event of the first deal being voted down, the EU would compromise. Harrison seems to be implying that it will be MPs who will buckle once the reality of what they have done becomes apparent.
'Without women’s rights there are no human rights' - Women MPs from around world meet in Commons
Women MPs from around the globe have pledged to form an international sisterhood and support each other’s fight for gender equality.
In the year marking 100 years since some women got the vote the UK has hosted the first ever meeting of women MPs from every parliament in the world.
At the gathering of 120 women from 86 countries at the houses of parliament in London, Penny Mordaunt, the international development secretary and minister for women, praised the “powerful strong courageous women” who had gathered, saying they had been motivated “by love, of our nations, your children and humanity” - thanking one politician for bringing her baby into the house of commons.
More great images from the #WomenMPsoftheWorld conference taken by the @HouseofCommons's @Jess__Taylor__ pic.twitter.com/dIPOMUDKLK
— Commons Press Office (@HoCPress) November 8, 2018
She said the challenges faced by women MPs included balancing work with motherhood, the daily battle to be taken seriously, sexual harassment and intimidation, adding that female parliamentarians had to show “restraint and resolve ... when constantly being patronised, the fight to be heard and to keep going when you are frightened.”
Calling on the spirit of the suffragettes, and echoing their rallying cry, Mordaunt suggested the international group could share a “giant sisterhood whatsapp group”, adding:
The margin of success is in this room. Because courage calls to courage everywhere, because without women’s rights there are no human rights.
She paid tribute to the suffragettes, but also to parliamentarians who had lost their lives while serving the public, such as Jo Cox.
Welcoming the politicians at Downing street last night the prime minister, Theresa May, said there were more female members of parliaments and legislative assemblies around the world than ever.
Currently there are the highest number of women in history sitting in the House of Commons. But only 32% of UK MPs are women, while across the world just 24% of people elected into international Parliaments are women. May said:
More women in elected office means a greater voice speaking out on issues that affect women. It means a greater focus on preventing gender-based violence, on girls’ education, on childcare and on women’s health ... But the benefits are also felt more widely. After all, if half the population is systematically excluded from politics then you’re also excluding half the talent.
Mother of the House Harriet Harman, who has been an MP for 36 years , said that all the MPs present shared the goal of being equal with men in parliament and being able to deliver equality for women. She said:
At this historic conference [...] we’ll determine to fight yet harder to get equality for women in our countries. We’ll make links so we can work together in the future. We’ll strengthen our resolve to fight the backlash against women in public life and to get yet more women into parliaments.
Rees-Mogg says May's plan for Irish backstop to end following joint review 'completely absurd'
In this week’s Spectator James Forsyth has a good article (paywall) with a bit more detail about how Theresa May’s proposed plan for the Irish backstop might work. He says:
At the same time, the ‘level playing field’ regulatory demands that the UK-wide backstop entails will severely curtail the freedom of the government to act. When the cabinet sees all these requirements written down, some might balk — especially because it’s so unclear how the UK would free itself. Resignations might follow. As one cabinet member says: ‘This is my own red line. At a push, I’ve accepted we obey EU regulation on product standards. But if we also have to obey their rules on how our companies are run, then it would be capitulation. Hers, but not mine.’
Crunch time is fast approaching. If the UK and the EU do sign a Brexit deal, there’ll be a transition period that runs to December 2020. But it is now highly unlikely that this will provide enough time to agree a trade deal or to sort out future customs arrangements. I understand from those who have seen its latest iteration that the political declaration, which will set out the plan for the future relationship between the UK and the EU, contains a series of options. This means that the most important decisions have yet to be taken, let alone worked up in detail or negotiated on. The result is that it is almost certain that in December 2020 either the transition will need to be extended or the backstop invoked.
The UK would then find itself in an arrangement that it would struggle to leave. One of those who has carefully examined the legal implications of this tells me that the backstop will be entrenched in UK law, as the European Communities Act of 1972 was. On top of this, the backstop will create an open-ended international legal obligation for the UK. This would mean that the UK couldn’t simply renounce the backstop or give notice to quit. Rather, it would have to hope that the proposed ‘joint review mechanism’ would allow the UK to leave it. To put it another way, this would be like the UK having to go to arbitration before invoking article 50. The UK would not have the sovereign right to simply quit the backstop.
According to Sam Coates in the Times today (paywall), Chris Grayling, the transport secretary, is particularly worried about the level playing field proposals. Coates says:
Chris Grayling, the transport secretary, is understood to have told Mrs May he was concerned that this “would mean a single market through the backdoor”. There are worries that in the event a backstop Britain would have to adhere to the working time directive, which bars staff from working more than a 48-hour week unless they opt out. This would mean obeying parts of the “social chapter”, long the target of Conservative Eurosceptics.
And Jacob Rees-Mogg, the chair of the European Research Group, which represents Tory MPs pushing for a harder Brexit, told the Sun that the “joint review mechanism” is particularly unacceptable to his colleagues. He said:
It is completely absurd. Brexit means we can already leave the customs union when we want to, why should we give that up? It is a breach of faith with the electorate to stay in it under the authority of a third party.
We are already seeing evidence that this arbitration mechanism is building our numbers. One colleague who is wavering about what to do has approached me in the last 24 hours to say he will vote with us if Mrs May goes ahead with this.
Opposition parties and anti-Brexit groups have been lining up to criticise Dominic Raab, the Brexit secretary, today for what he said about the Dover-Calais crossing. (See 9.25am.)
Labour put out this statement from the shadow Brexit minister Jenny Chapman.
How are we meant to trust this government to deliver a good deal for the country when we have a Brexit secretary who doesn’t even understand the very basics of Brexit?
The SNP put out this statement from MSP Stewart Stevenson.
This is a stunning admission that shows just how clueless the Tories are about their Brexit plans.
A Tory Brexit could have a catastrophic impact on trade with the continent and leave supermarket shelves empty.
And that scenario could also mean Scottish exports, such as seafood, stuck in lorry parks at Dover rather than reaching their export markets in a timely manner.
And the anti-Brexit group Best for Britain put out this statement from Labour MP Jo Stevens.
We finally have an admission of what we’ve known all along - that the Brexiteers hadn’t really thought through any of the impacts of leaving the EU. These comments are shocking.
This is from the Times’ Sam Coates.
Brexit
— Sam Coates Times (@SamCoatesTimes) November 8, 2018
Under one draft timetable discussed in Whitehall today:
- Cabinet likely Monday
- Tue am Raab meet Barnier
- Tue pm publication of full Withdrawal - Agreement and outline political declaration
- Tue pm confirm likely EC council
- Wed am PM statement to Commons
A document leaked to news organisations on Tuesday purporting to show government plans for a PR offensive to sell Theresa May’s Brexit deal suggested the Cabinet Office would prepare an explainer showing what the outcome would mean for the public “comparing it to no deal, but not to our current deal”.
Today Dominic Grieve, the Conservative pro-European and former attorney general, has written to the cabinet secretary, Sir Mark Sedwill, saying any explainer of this kind should also compare the deal to the status quo. In his own letter, which has been produced in collaboration with People’s Vote, the campaign for a second referendum, he says:
It is of the utmost importance that parliament and the public can compare any arrangement the prime minister agrees, against the benefits of European Union membership and make clear the impact that the deal proposed would have on every single area of the economy, public services, finances, security and opportunity. Indeed the minister in charge of Brexit has previously stated that the deal Britain will secure will have the ‘exact same benefits’ we currently enjoy.
The UK is lagging behind EU neighbours economically and is set to remain at the bottom of the growth league in the years after Brexit, according to new forecasts from the European commission, the Press Association reports. The commission warned that Britain’s economic prospects could be even gloomier, as its forecasts are based on the assumption of a “benign” result to Brexit talks, with trading relations between the UK and EU remaining unchanged. Risks to the UK economy from a bad Brexit outcome are “large and predominantly to the downside”, the commission said in its autumn Economic Forecast. The report, released in Brussels, downgraded UK GDP growth for 2018 to 1.3% - from 1.5% in the spring - and predicted it would decline further to 1.2% in both 2019 and 2020, the Press Association reports.
My colleague Graeme Wearden has more on this on his business live blog.
Scotland’s highest court has refused the UK government leave to appeal its referral of a case to the European court of justice that seeks to establish whether the UK can unilaterally stop Brexit, my colleague Libby Brooks reports. This paves the way for the case to be heard in Luxembourg later this month.
Here is the article from Austria’s Standard about the Brexit deal flagged up earlier. And here, thanks to the wonders of Google Translate, are some of the key points it is making.
- It says a draft of the final Brexit withdrawal agreement will be available on Monday.
- It says that the backstop plan would involve the whole of the UK staying in the customs union “for at least one year longer” - ie, for at least a year beyond December 2020, when the transition is due to end.
- It says Donald Tusk, the president of the European council, could schedule an emergency EU summit on Sunday 25 November to finalise the deal.
Brexit deal will probably be agreed in mid December, says European commissioner
European agriculture commissioner Phil Hogan told RTE that unless Britain produced its proposals for the Irish border within the “next few days” a November deal was unlikely. He said:
I would say if I was a betting person we would have a December council to discuss the final outcome and hopefully we can do a deal.
The December European council is scheduled for Thursday 13 December and Friday 14.
He insisted Britain could not backslide on the backstop it agreed to in December last year and the EU “wait for proposals from the UK about how they can adapt their position to accommodate the agreement they have already made in relation to the backstop.”
These are from the Telegraph’s Gordon Rayner.
NEW: Austria's Standard newspaper is claiming the Brexit withdrawal agreement will be signed off by negotiators on Monday, with a special EU Council session on Sunday Nov 25 to ratify it. Austria has the presidency of the EU at the moment...
— Gordon Rayner (@gordonrayner) November 8, 2018
Here is that report in Der Standard:https://t.co/fpiatXftlE
— Gordon Rayner (@gordonrayner) November 8, 2018
At FMQs this lunchtime Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, referred to a report released today by the Fraser of Allander Institute which found that the NHS would soon account for half of Scottish government spending.
While Sturgeon was using it to press home the message of government investment, the FAI report warned of a knock-on squeeze on funding for other services, calling for “an urgent debate on future priorities” and suggesting options including sweeping council tax reforms and the controversial possibility of introducing student tuition fees.
Late yesterday afternoon, a clear majority of MSPs voted in favour of a second referendum on Brexit, following a Lib Dem amendment to a Holyrood debate on Brexit which urged members to support the campaign for a People’s Vote.
SNP, Green and Lib Dem members supported the call, along with two Labour MSPs, while the rest of the Labour group abstained, in the symbolic vote which was nevertheless the first time the Holyrood Parliament has put its views on a second Brexit vote on record.
“Simplify, then exaggerate,” is a standard piece of advice for journalists (coined by a former editor of the Economist). In normal circumstances it is good advice too, but perhaps it’s not so wise when applied to matters pertaining to national identity, and particularly to those affecting the people of Northern Ireland, who, as Theresa May is discovering, don’t take these things lightly.
So, with that in mind, I’ll correct what I said at 11.09am, and apologise to readers who complained about it below the line. “We” are not an island. If “we” means the UK, then obviously Northern Ireland is included. And even if you just look at the smaller entity, Great Britain, then “island” does not apply either. What about the Isle of Wight, Orkney, and Shetland, for starters
In fact, according to ukcoastguide.co.uk, there are at least 1,000 islands making up the UK, and perhaps as many as 5,000. It has a list of some of the main ones here. According to a contributor to a Guardian Notes and queries column, there are around 4,400 islands in the British Isles, or 6,100 at high tide, of which around 210 are inhabited.
This topic relates to a broader question about whether people live in England, Great Britain, the United Kingdom - something which is confusing not just to foreigners, but to people who live here too. If you are interested in this topic, you should read The Isles, a history of this archipelago by Norman Davies. He chose that title specifically because he considered others unsatisfactory, and his book includes a lengthy introduction about how people studying this country’s history have often been uncertain as to what they are actually referring to. Here’s an excerpt.
One of Davies’ arguments is that the UK state has been less permanent than people think. He told Channel 4 News:
All political entities fall apart sooner or later. It’s just a question of when. The United Kingdom began to break up in 1922 when the Irish Free State was formed. English people have forgotten that.
The pillars of Britishness are all crumbling or have already crumbled, so the United Kingdom is living on borrowed time. My view is a bit fatalistic: what will happen will happen.
At some point after Brexit there may be a need for another edition.
UPDATE: This is quite useful on the subject too.
Try this: pic.twitter.com/aRDfsPk61L
— John Woodman (@jwripple) November 8, 2018
Updated
The European commission has tweeted this. Perhaps they’re trying to make a point?
Growth forecast in 2019:
— European Commission 🇪🇺 (@EU_Commission) November 8, 2018
🇲🇹 4.9
🇮🇪 4.5
🇸🇰 4.1
🇷🇴 3.8
🇵🇱 3.7
🇧🇬 3.7
🇨🇾 3.5
🇭🇺 3.4
🇸🇮 3.3
🇱🇻 3.2
🇱🇺 3
🇨🇿 2.9
🇪🇪 2.8
🇭🇷 2.8
🇱🇹 2.8
🇳🇱 2.4
🇪🇸 2.2
🇫🇮 2.2
🇦🇹 2
🇬🇷 2
🇪🇺 1.9
🇩🇪 1.8
🇸🇪 1.8
🇩🇰 1.8
🇵🇹 1.8
🇫🇷 1.6
🇧🇪 1.5
🇮🇹 1.2
🇬🇧 1.2#ECForecast https://t.co/fRe13nc5fC
Hunt says he is 'confident' UK and EU will reach Brexit deal within three weeks
The Foreign Office haven’t released a text of Jeremy Hunt’s speech yet, either in English or in French, the language he delivered it in. But here are some tweets with the best lines, from Kim Willsher (Guardian), Henry Samuel (Telegraph), Asa Bennett (Telegraph) and Iain Watson (BBC).
- Hunt, the foreign secretary, said he was “confident” that the UK would reach a Brexit deal with the EU within three weeks.
UK Foreign Sec Jeremy Hunt says “confident” we will reach an agreement on Brexit “within next three weeks”. Insists French gov “very committed” to reaching that deal
— Henry Samuel (@H_E_Samuel) November 8, 2018
But not within seven days ...
Getting a Brexit deal done in the next 7 days is "pushing it", Hunt tells BBC
— Asa Bennett (@asabenn) November 8, 2018
- He said holding a second Brexit referendum would be “profoundly undemocratic” and that parliament would never vote for it.
Hunt rules out a @peoplesvote_uk, telling the French: "Parliament will never vote for it...the reason Parliament will never vote for it is if there were to be a second referendum, it'd be profoundly undemocratic."
— Asa Bennett (@asabenn) November 8, 2018
UK Foreign Sec Jeremy Hunt dismisses idea of 2nd referendum on EU membership as “profoundly undemocratic” as it could trigger “3rd or 4th” #Brexit vote
— Henry Samuel (@H_E_Samuel) November 8, 2018
- He sidestepped a question about whether the government should publish its Brexit legal advice, saying that was a matter for the prime minister.
Asked if he wants to see #Brexit legal advice published Jeremy Hunt says ‘that’s a matter for the Prime Minister’ pic.twitter.com/ItrHz6jHuV
— iain watson (@iainjwatson) November 8, 2018
- He rejected claims that the UK wants to “have its cake and eat it” over Brexit.
UK foreign sec Jeremy Hunt says of #Brexit: “from 28 March next year we will be in the outside not the inside...so we are not as sometimes suggested trying to have our ‘cake and eat it’.
— Kim Willsher (@kimwillsher1) November 8, 2018
UK foreign sec. Jeremy Hunt uses French phrase for having cake and eat it. “Le beurre et l’argent du beurre” translates as having butter and the money from selling it.
— Kim Willsher (@kimwillsher1) November 8, 2018
Irish deputy PM urges caution over reports Brexit deal to be agreed in next few days
Simon Coveney, Ireland’s deputy prime minister, has urged “caution” over excitement in Westminster that a Brexit deal could be struck in the next few days.
He was speaking amid growing concern in Brussels and Dublin that the Conservative party are once again “negotiating with themselves” over Brexit and are mistaking a cabinet decision for the “end of story”.
Sources say the British government has yet to share any wording of the contentious backstop proposal to keep the Irish border open in the event of no deal and this alone will take days to scrutinise before agreement can be reached.
Speaking in Dublin on Thursday, going off script after a speech to the Canada Business Association, Coveney said:
Can I just say this in relation to commentary today particularly in British media. I would urge caution; an imminent breakthrough is not necessarily to be taken for granted, not by a long shot.
Repeatedly people seem to make the same mistake over and over again, assuming that if the British cabinet agrees something, then that is it, everything is agreed.
Here is a video clip of Dominic Raab saying last night that in the past he had not fully understood the importance of the Dover-Calais border. (See 9.25am.)
In it he also refers to the “peculiar geographic entity that is the United Kingdom”. I think he means we’re an island.
Here's the video clip oh him saying it, which also mentions the "peculiar geographic economic entity that is the United Kingdom" 🙂 pic.twitter.com/jad5AnE54c
— David Vella (@indeox) November 8, 2018
UPDATE: Of course, we’re not just “an island”. I was simplifying for effect. See 1.28pm for more on this.
Updated
Barnier warns EU now under threat from 'a Farage in every country'
Here is my colleague Jennifer Rankin’s story about Michel Barnier’s speech to the EPP conference in Helsinki.
The European Union’s Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier has called on pro-EU forces to defend the fragile union from populist forces, because he said there was now “a Farage in every country”.
In a speech at the conference of the powerful centre-right European People’s party, Barnier did not go into details of the deadlocked Brexit negotiations, but warned the EU project was “under threat”.
“We will have to fight against those who want to demolish Europe with their fear, their populist deceit,” he told more than 700 EPP delegates in Helsinki, before naming the former Ukip leader Nigel Farage.
In a wide-ranging speech that moved from European defence to electric vehicles, he mentioned Brexit only to promise to “fulfill my Brexit mission to the end” and make a brief opening joke that his speech would be short because “the clock is ticking”.
What Davis used to say about prospect of vote against Brexit deal leading to EU agreeing to renegotiate
Today David Davis argued that MPs should vote down Theresa May’s Brexit deal because, in those circumstances, the EU would improve its offer to the EU. (See 9.03am.)
But when Davis was Brexit secretary, and MPs argued that they should have the power to amend the motion approving the Brexit deal (the “meaningful vote”) so that they could send ministers back to Brussels to renegotiate, Davis insisted this was not realistic. This is what he told the Commons Brexit committee in April when this idea was put to him.
I’m not going to give advice on how to create circumstances which may undermine the government’s negotiating position. I’m not entirely sure how much force a government sent back with its tail between its legs by parliament would have in such a negotiation.
Jeremy Hunt, the foreign secretary, has just started giving his speech in Paris on Anglo-French relations. I will post a summary when I’ve seen the text, but here are some tweets on it, from Hunt himself, the Foreign Office’s Theo Rycroft, the Daily Telegraph’s Henry Samuel and AFP’s Adam Plowright.
Great French welcome at the Quai d’Orsay in Paris this morning to see @JY_LeDrian. Excellent discussions reminded me that there is a huge common bond between our peoples and as Europe’s two big military powers we have a special responsibility for European security pic.twitter.com/dYNo0aAJud
— Jeremy Hunt (@Jeremy_Hunt) November 8, 2018
@Jeremy_Hunt beginning his speech at the British Residence in Paris: 🇬🇧🇫🇷past, present and future.... pic.twitter.com/PNyg9jL3GO
— Theo Rycroft (@TheoRycroft) November 8, 2018
UK Foreign Sec Jeremy Hunt is giving a speech at British embassy in Paris IN FRENCH (pretty fluent). On #Brexit « We are not, as is sometimes suggested, even occasionally here in France, trying to have our ‘cake and eat it’.
— Henry Samuel (@H_E_Samuel) November 8, 2018
British FS J Hunt in speech in Paris says a hard Brexit would bring “friction - at our border with queues at Dover and Calais, in the exchange of information between our security services and in greater divergence in our rules and regulation.” That choice would be a “mistake”
— Henry Samuel (@H_E_Samuel) November 8, 2018
British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt is delivering a speech in surprisingly good French. Picked up while working as a bag carrier in a Paris hotel in his youth, he says.
— Adam Plowright (@ADAMPLOW) November 8, 2018
You can watch a live feed of the European People’s party conference in Helsinki here. I will post some highlights later. We’ve already had speeches from Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, and Leo Varadkar, the Irish prime minister, but Barnier said almost nothing about Brexit, and what Varadkar said on the topic did not really go beyond what he has said in the past.
David Davis's Today interview - Summary
Here is a summary of the main points from David Davis’s Today interview.
- Davis, the former Brexit secretary, urged MPs to vote down Theresa May’s Brexit plan on the basis that that would force the EU to make a better offer. (See 9.03am.)
- He criticised the government’s Brexit negotiating strategy, saying it had been unwilling to press the EU hard enough. He said:
This is a negotiation. It’s not a friendly, public debate at Hyde Park corner or whatever. This is a negotiation. They will take a stance. And we have to test the stance. One of the difficulties about the government’s approach to the negotiation to date has been they’ve been unwilling to take any risk in testing the European Union’s stance on anything, with the possible exception of money, we did press them on money.
That means they will never concede a point until you test it. If you buy a house, you don’t just take the first price offered. And you don’t say, ‘Well, he never said he would take a lower price.’ You press for a lower price. If you buy a car, the same. You buy anything. And this is a deal just like that.
The obvious objection to this is that, as Brexit secretary, Davis was apparently in charge of the government’s negotiating strategy, although in truth what he is saying underlines how he never had the final say because May was ultimately leading the negotiation.
- He played down the risks of a no deal Brexit. Asked what would happen in the event of there being no deal, he replied:
I would not use pejorative terms like “crash out”. We would leave. And there would be some hiccups in the first year, no doubt. But we would have all the rights and controls over our own destiny.
He said that the government had around 300 plans for a no deal Brexit. And he also said that claims that there would be insulin and food shortages in the event of a no deal Brexit were “nonsense”. He added: “We are a big country, we can look after ourselves,
- He renewed his call for the government to publish its Brexit legal advice. He said, when the government was involved in legal action, it made sense for legal advice to be kept private. But that was not an issue in this case, he said.
What we must see is the complete legal advice, not a summary.
He also said MPs needed to know exactly how the Irish backstop plan would work.
Are we going to have to wait until the Irish government says it’s OK to leave? If so, that’s not acceptable. Are we going to have to wait until it’s convenient for the [European] commission to say when we leave? If so, it’s not acceptable. I suspect that they have not pinned down any of these issues and they need to be pinned down before parliament votes.
Former Brexit sec @DavidDavisMP compares Brexit negotiations to buying a car or a house. "This is a deal just like that, much more complicated, but we have to press" for better terms. More: https://t.co/iWWjLKB2LV #r4today pic.twitter.com/x0fTGLVm5b
— BBC Radio 4 Today (@BBCr4today) November 8, 2018
Raab admits in past he didn't fully understand importance of keeping Dover-Calais border frictionless
David Davis was replaced as Brexit secretary by Dominic Raab, another prominent leave campaigner in the EU referendum, and in his London Playbook briefing Jack Blanchard records an astonishing quote from Raab, who spoke at an event on Brexit and the tech industry last night.
Raab said that consumers would lose out if new border rules create delays at the border. And he admitted that until now he did not realise how important the Dover-Calais crossing was. He said:
I hadn’t quite understood the full extent of this, but if you look at the UK and look at how we trade in goods, we are particularly reliant on the Dover-Calais crossing. And that is one of the reasons why we have wanted to make sure we have a specific and very proximate relationship with the EU, to ensure frictionless trade at the border ... I don’t think it is a question so much of the risk of major shortages, but I think probably the average consumer might not be aware of the full extent to which the choice of goods that we have in the stores are dependent on one or two very specific trade routes.
As you would expect, anti-Brexiter campaigners have seized on this admission with glee.
From the scientist and broadcaster Brian Cox
How could it possibly come as a suprise to Dominic Raab that our most important trade gateway is that which is closest geographically to our most important market? https://t.co/kCSMWywsw7
— Brian Cox (@ProfBrianCox) November 8, 2018
From Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s former communications chief
‘I hadn’t quite understood the full extent of this’ - @DominicRaab Mindblowing. https://t.co/zuzkF5le5g
— Alastair PEOPLE’S VOTE Campbell (@campbellclaret) November 8, 2018
From Will Straw, who was executive director of the Britain Stronger in Europe campaign during the EU referendum
Hi @DominicRaab - would it not have been better if you’d done your homework before backing Leave? (U-turn via @Jack_Blanchard_ ) pic.twitter.com/EZoLRmrO7O
— Will Straw (@wdjstraw) November 8, 2018
But some people are giving Raab credit for his honest.
From John Springford, deputy director of the Centre for European Reform
Bravo Raab. Not often a politician openly changes their mind. https://t.co/1hWDiXuaE5
— John Springford (@JohnSpringford) November 8, 2018
Updated
David Davis urges MPs to vote down May's Brexit deal so EU makes better offer
We are still waiting for Theresa May to finalise her Irish backstop plan, the one bit of the proposed Brexit withdrawal agreement yet to be agreed, and to put it to the cabinet. Our overnight story with all the latest is here. But in the meantime David Davis, who resigned as Brexit secretary in the summer because he could not support May’s plan, has set out a new strategy for Brexiters. In an interview for Today this morning, he said MPs should vote down May’s Brexit plan to force the EU to make a better offer. Confirming that he would vote against, he told the programme
What would happen if the deal fell apart, which I think at the moment is looking like a probability ... If it was voted down, then they would have to go back to the union once more.
Now, this will be a slightly different atmosphere. Both sides will be staring at no deal.
Now, I don’t think no deal is as frightening as people think. But the government is obviously nervous of it. And the European commission, and all the member states - nearly all the member states - are nervous of it. So I think that will force a very, very different, and actually, I think, rather better deal.
When asked why that would happen, Davis replied:
Because both sides will be under such pressure to get a good deal.
The government does not accept this argument. In the past ministers have argued that the EU would not be willing to reopen the negotiations in the even to parliament voting down a deal, not least because a deal would have to be agreed by the end of the year to allow time for the European parliament to agree it before Brexit happens on 29 March 2019. But whether, in the event of a crisis, there would be some give (Davis’s argument) is a matter of judgment.
I will post more from Davis’s interview shortly.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.30am: The women MPs of the world conference being held in parliament opens.
10am: Jeremy Hunt, the foreign secretary, gives a speech in France. As Patrick Wintour reports, Hunt will attempt to overcome the awkward coincidence of Brexit and the centenary of the Armistice marking the Anglo-French victory in the first world war by claiming relations between the two countries are bigger than Brexit.
10am: Donald Tusk, president of the European council, Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European commission, and Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, all speak at a European People’s party conference in Helsinki.
As usual, I will also be covering breaking political news as it happens, as well as bringing you the best reaction, comment and analysis from the web. I plan to post a summary when I finish at 3pm (earlier than usual because I’ve got a school parents’ evening, I’m afraid. “Evening” is a misnomer.)
Here is the Politico Europe round-up of this morning’s political news. And here is the PoliticsHome list of today’s top 10 must-reads.
If you want to follow me or contact me on Twitter, I’m on @AndrewSparrow.
I try to monitor the comments BTL but normally I find it impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer direct questions, although sometimes I miss them or don’t have time.
If you want to attract my attention quickly, it is probably better to use Twitter.
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