Jacob Rees-Mogg has said that Theresa May needs to recognise that Chequers doesn’t have much support and that she should think carefully about switching tack to propose that the UK strikes a Canada-style free trade agreement with the European Union after Brexit.
The chairman of the hard Brexit-backing European Research Group urged the prime minister to abandon her own customs plans before a crunch cabinet meeting at the launch of a report by the rightwing Institute of Economic Affairs thinktank that proposed a deregulated, free trade future for the UK.
Rees-Mogg described May as “a lady of singular wisdom” who was “likely to recognise the reality that Chequers doesn’t have much support” and that “with her wisdom and insight she’ll think carefully about adopting it”.
He was also asked if he would support a second referendum as a way of unblocking the increasingly fraught political situation around Brexit. But he dismissed second referendum campaigners as people trying to overturn the result of the 2016 vote. “They lost, they should grow up,” Rees-Mogg said.
The MP was speaking an an event attended by a string of critics of May’s Chequers plan, including the former Brexit secretary David Davis, which they claim would leave the UK forced to share regulations for food and goods from the European Union after Brexit.
It also comes a few hours before May faces her cabinet on Monday afternoon where she will update colleagues on the Brexit talks and amid reports that some cabinet minsters will urge her to dramatically switch negotiating tack.
Rees-Mogg said he believed that because the EU had “snubbed the prime minister” by appearing to reject Chequers at the Salzburg summit last week the only options were a no-deal Brexit or to propose a last-minute free trade agreement. He argued that it would be popular with the British public, and said “if we go to the House of Commons it would be passed”.
But at a morning press briefing held at the same time as the IEA event, Downing Street dismissed the idea that a Canada-type free trade agreement could work.
May’s spokesman said he could only talk in general about such deals, as he had yet to see the IEA’s full plans. But he insisted such an idea would have to lead to a hard border in Ireland, thus triggering the EU’s so-called backstop, which seeks to prevent this.
He said: “No EU third country free trade agreement has ever led to a reduction in barriers to the extent that no hard border is needed. There’s no global precedent for an infrastructure-free border without substantial regulatory and customs alignment.”
Shanker Singham, director of the international trade and competition unit at the IEA, called on ministers to rethink their Brexit strategy. Singham, speaking at the launch of an alternative Brexit plan in Westminster, said the government’s white paper would “absolutely preclude” a free trade agreement with the US.
Singham’s report argues that the UK should try to deregulate in comparison to the EU. He said: “Membership of the European Union stifles prosperity just as it prevents the UK governing itself. It saddles the UK with regulations that protect large incumbent businesses from competition, harming innovation and reducing efficiency.”
Davis said the UK’s negotiations with the EU had reached a “cul de sac”. He said that the EU’s rejection of Chequers at Salzburg was “all too predictable” and it would have happened either there or in October at the European Summit due next month.
Boris Johnson did not attend the IEA event, but was quick to praise the report entitled Plan A+ on social media. He tweeted: “This is a plan the EU would understand and respect – delivering prosperity for the U.K. and our European partners. I’ve no doubt it would unite MPs and the country.”
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