The week ahead is shaping up to be big one for Brexit. As usual. Jeremy Corbyn, Philip Hammond and Liam Fox were doing the rounds this morning. This is what they said.
The vote might not happen
We are expecting MPs to vote for a third time on Theresa May’s deal early in the week. But Phillip Hammond and Liam Fox made clear today that this will only happen if the government believes it can win.
“We will only bring the deal back if we are confident that enough of our colleagues and the DUP are prepared to support is so that we can get it through Parliament,” the chancellor told BBC One’s Andrew Marr Show. “We are not just going to keep presenting it if we haven’t moved the dial.”
Fox, the international trade secretary, told Sky News’ Ridge on Sunday it would “difficult to justify having a vote if you knew we were going to lose it”.
There’s pressure on the PM quit to secure the deal
Esther McVey, the former work and pensions secretary who today repeated her desire to become PM, is one of those Tory MPs who has decided to swing behind May’s deal having previously opposed it.
Amid suggestions May would increase the likelihood of wining the vote if she pledged to step down after securing the deal, McVey told the BBC’s Pienaar’s Politics the PM should have a “dignified departure”.
Asked on Marr whether May would quit if she believed it would help, Hammond very pointedly did not say no. “She is the kind of person who will always do what she thinks is in the best interests of the country,” the chancellor said.
“She is a person with a very strong moral streak to everything she does and she will always do, I’m sure, what she feels is in Britain’s best interests.”
And do the DUP want more cash?
Crucial to getting any deal through parliament is the support of the DUP. Hammond’s decision to join talks with the Northern Ireland party in Whitehall last week fuelled speculation he would throw more money at the government’s confidence and supply partners to sweeten the deal.
Asked three times by Marr to rule out giving the DUP some extra cash, Hammond refused.
Election talk won’t go away
Asked on Ridge about the prospect of a snap general election to break the Brexit deadlock. Fox said: “I think if we had an election this year it would be because there was some emergency situation and of course that would thrust upon us at short notice.” Given the state of British politics right now, an emergency situation seems almost the default.
Which is what Jeremy Corbyn wants
A general election, of course, is what Jeremy Corbyn would prefer. He used his appearance on Ridge to indicate Labour would table a vote of no confidence in the government should MPs reject May’s Brexit deal this week. “I think at that point a confidence motion will be appropriate. At that point we should say there has to be a general election,” he said. “We will obviously decide the exact moment.”
He could back a second referendum... and vote Leave
The Labour leader also confirmed he could officially back an amendment tabled by backbenchers Peter Kyle and Phil Wilson who have put forward a plan to support the deal on the condition it is put to a referendum. “We have obviously got to see the wording of it,” he said.
But Corbyn is clearly not that keen on a referendum and refused to say he was “enthusiastic” about another public poll. And in comments that will irritate pro-EU campaigners, he confirmed he could easily campaign for Brexit in a second referendum.
“If we have got a good deal in which we can have a dynamic relationship with Europe, which is all the trading relationship and so on, then that might be a good way forward that unites the country,” Corbyn said when asked if he would vote Remain.
Boleing alone
Nick Boles, who quit his local Conservative association following a rift over his stance on Brexit, told Marr he would continue to take the Tory whip in the Commons.
The Grantham and Stamford MP said he had concluded his relationship with his local party “had reached a point where there was no point pretending that we could patch things up”.
“I will be my own kind of Conservative, the one that I’ve always been, which is a progressive, liberal, modernising Conservative, not an ideological reactionary Conservative,” he said.
How rude
Boris Johnson triggered outrage last week (an evergreen start to a sentence), when he said money had been “spaffed up the wall” by the child abuse inquiry.
Labour MP Rupa Huq told the BBC’s Sunday Politics she had to look up what it meant and discovered it was “very rude apparently”. It is. She said the former foreign secretary should be more wary, given he had himself “pissed down the drain a whole load of public money”.