After a brief lull in Brexit talks ahead of the local elections, cross-party negotiations are due to begin again on Tuesday. And depending on how you want to interpret today’s Sunday shows, a deal between the Tories and Labour is either really close or really far away.
John McDonnell was asked directly by Andrew Marr whether he trusted Theresa May or not. “No,” he replied.
“Sorry, not after this weekend when she’s blown the confidentiality I had and I actually think she’s jeopardised the negotiations for her own personal protection.”
The shadow chancellor was responding to leaks to the press of what has been discussed in the talks.
With the Tory leadership race essentially already underway, McDonnell said Labour was worried whatever deal it struck with May would immediately be undone by her successor.
“It’s trying to enter into a contract with a company that’s going into administration and the people who are going to take over are not willing to fulfil that contract,” he explained.
McDonnell said he wanted guarantees that a cross-party deal could not be unpicked by having its terms stitched into the withdrawal agreement by the EU.
He also tried to carefully tread the tightrope that is Labour’s position on a second referendum.
Which currently is that the party backs a referendum on a “bad deal” or a “Tory deal” but not on any deal.
While McDonnell said it “may well” be that the public had a vote on whatever deal is struck, he did not say this was a red line for Labour.
And in what could be a hint that the option of a second referendum could be put to a vote in the Commons in some other way, he added: “I think the Conservatives have to recognise that if a deal is going to go through there might be a large number of MPs who will want a public vote.”
Tom Watson, who backs a referendum on whatever deal is agreed, told BBC Radio 5 Live’s Pienaar’s Politics predicted it would “very difficult” to agree a deal in the cross-party talks.
“Obviously for a large number of our colleagues a confirmatory ballot on a deal is a deal breaker. Now it might be we find some form of deal that diminishes that desire but it will be very hard to achieve and only time will tell on that,” he said.
Rory Stewart, the new international development secretary, meanwhile told Sky News’ Sophy Ridge On Sunday it would actually be “surprisingly easy” to strike a deal as the Labour and Tory positions are “very, very close”.
“I think a deal can be done, a lot of this rests on, to be honest, one man: whether Jeremy Corbyn really wants to deliver a Brexit deal,” he said.
Stewart said he preferred outcome was May’s initial Brexit deal. But added an agreement with Labour was now the “right option”.
And he accepted that Brexit deadlock was the blame for his party’s losses at the local elections last week.
“Labour and Conservatives at the moment are suffering from this whole Brexit thing – tortuous, sort of endless, Brexit thing and we’ve got to get beyond it,” he said.
Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Tory leader who campaigned for Remain, told Marr that MPs “need to get this deal over the line”.
“Now we’ve gotten pretty close, we’re getting closer and closer to where that middle ground might be and I would urge my colleagues in the House of Commons to start taking those first steps to walk back to something in the middle because we need to get Brexit done, we need to get it sorted and we need to allow the country to move on,” she said.
Looming large over the talks are the upcoming European elections, in which Nigel Farage’s new Brexit Party is on course to do extremely well.
Speaking to Ridge, Farage said a Labour-Tory Brexit deal would be the “final betrayal”.
“If May signs up to this, I can’t see the point of the Conservative Party even existing. What is it for?” he asked.
The former Ukip leader ramped up the rhetoric and said it would be a “coalition of politicians against the people”. Expect to hear a lot more of this as the elections draw nearer.
Vince Cable was also feeling pretty good about himself this morning following his strong showing at the local elections.
The outgoing Lib Dem leader said his party was now “fully recovered”. Cable said the victories had an “element of a protest vote” against the main parties, but that it was “much more than that”.