As reported by the UK Telegraph, UK Prime Minister Theresa May is set to ask her cabinet to push through a customs union agreement on Brexit, as May’s opponents threaten to tear down her government.
Key highlights(via the Telegraph)
Theresa May will on Thursday ask her Brexit “war Cabinet” to agree a backstop plan that would keep Britain in a customs union with Brussels until a permanent trade deal can be agreed.
British and EU negotiators are understood to have agreed in principle to an all-UK backstop plan to avoid a hard border in Northern Ireland that would remove the final major obstacle blocking a withdrawal agreement.
Boris Johnson said the deal would turn the UK into a “permanent EU colony” and the DUP angrily threatened to break its confidence and supply deal with the Conservatives and potentially bring down the Government if the Prime Minister goes through with the plan, which it described as a “sell out”.
The backstop plan being proposed by Mrs May would involve the whole of the UK remaining in a customs union with the EU while negotiations over a free trade deal take place, which Brexiteers fear could take years.
Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, said yesterday that a deal on the Withdrawal Agreement is “within reach”, but only if Britain remains in a customs union with the EU.
Writing in the Telegraph, Sammy Wilson MP, the DUP’s Brexit spokesman, said Mrs May was pursuing “the road to parliamentary defeat” because his party would vote against any deal that included the proposed backstop.
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