*UNDER CONSTRUCTION* Signal-boosting #ToryBritain truths to the nation. Helping YOU be part of the fightback.
From the Daily Mirror: Boris Johnson has insisted he was ready to take the UK out of the EU even without a deal on October 31 – even though it could cause catastrophic damage.
From The Independent: Conservative Party members would happily support the break-up of the UK, “significant damage” to the British economy and even the destruction of their own party in order to secure Brexit, a poll has found.
From the Daily Mirror: Nearly 7 in 10 Tory members think the Government is bungling Brexit negotiations, a scathing poll has revealed.
From the Daily Mirror: The Brexit ships firm that has no ships has deleted legal text that MPs accused it of copying and pasting from a takeaway food outlet.
From HuffPost UK: Theresa May’s hopes of winning DUP support for her Brexit deal have been dealt a blow after the party demanded significant changes – which the EU is already refusing to allow.
After two days of talks with the prime minister and other senior government figures, the DUP on Thursday revealed it will still refuse to back the deal in its current form.
Theresa May made getting DUP support an absolute priority after delaying the Commons vote on the Brexit deal last month in the face of almost certain defeat. She was hoping their backing could start a domino effect to win over scores of Tory opponents.
From The Guardian: One of the companies contracted by the Tory government to charter ferries in the event of a no-deal Brexit does not own any ships, has not previously operated a ferry service and is not planning to do so until close to the UK’s scheduled departure date from the European Union, it has emerged.
Concerns have been raised about Seaborne Freight, which was awarded a £13.8m contract to operate freight ferries from Ramsgate to the Belgian port of Ostend if the UK leaves the EU without a deal, after a councillor for the Kent town queried whether it would be possible to set up the new service by the scheduled Brexit date.
The contract is one of three agreements worth a total of £107.7m signed by the government without a tendering process to help ease “severe congestion” at Dover by securing extra lorry capacity.
Seaborne hopes to operate freight ferries from Ramsgate from late March, beginning with two ships and increasing to four by the end of the summer.
But Paul Messenger, a Conservative county councillor for Ramsgate, questioned whether the government had carried out sufficient checks on the firm, telling the BBC: “It has no ships and no trading history so how can due diligence be done? Why choose a company that never moved a single truck in their entire history and give them £14m? I don’t understand the logic of that.”
Seaborne was established two years ago and has been in negotiations about running freight ferries between Ramsgate and Ostend, but no services are currently running. Narrow berths in the port mean there are few suitable commercial vessels available.
From The Guardian: Theresa May’s waning authority means the idea of concluding a three-year spending review next year is a fantasy and is only likely to be achieved if she were replaced as leader, cabinet ministers have said.
The government has promised a full spending review in 2019 as part of a pledge to end austerity in the coming years, but senior figures say May will struggle to get the plan signed off.
The review has become the subject of speculation in Whitehall given the prime minister’s pledge to step down before the next election and the unpredictable state of the Brexit negotiations.
“The idea that the cabinet is going to accept a three-year spending review is fantasy,” one government source said. “Most of them won’t even do a three-minute broadcast clip at the moment. Departments are starting to get their houses in order for a one-year sticking plaster settlement.”
Others are opposed to the idea of a one-year plan. They describe it as “kicking the can”, and believe May should instead consider quitting before the spending review to let a new leader set the direction of the party.
“She cannot be allowed to set those terms herself,” one cabinet minister said.
From The Independent: A total of 3,500 troops will be put on standby for any crisis triggered by a no-deal Brexit, the defence secretary has announced.
From The Independent: Senior Tory MP Robert Halfon has compared the row engulfing the party to the deadly clashes between feral schoolboys in the novel Lord of the Flies.
From The Guardian: Theresa May confirmed she will not lead the Conservatives into the next general election as she arrived in Brussels to rescue her Brexit deal.
She refused to give a date for her departure from Downing Street, but made public her promise to MPs ahead of Wednesday’s no-confidence vote that she would quit before the next poll in 2022.
“Yes, I’ve said that in my heart I would love to be able to lead the Conservative party into the next general election, but I think it is right that the party feels it would prefer to go into that election with a new leader,” May said. “People try to talk about dates; what I’m clear about is the next general election is in 2022 and I think it’s right another party leader takes us into that general election.”
The prime minister survived by a margin of 200 votes to 117 in the party confidence vote, but is still facing calls to resign from senior figures on her backbenches, including Jacob Rees-Mogg.
From The Guardian: Conservative MPs have triggered a vote of no confidence in Theresa May, plunging the Brexit process into chaos as Tory colleagues indicated they no longer had faith in the prime minister to deliver the deal.
Sir Graham Brady, the chair of the 1922 Committee, has received at least 48 letters from Conservative MPs calling for a vote of no confidence in May. Under party rules, a contest is triggered if 15% of Conservative MPs write to the chair of the committee of Tory backbenchers.
From Daily Mirror: Sam Gyimah has become the seventh member of the government to quit since Theresa May unveiled her Brexit plan.
From indy100: Quotes from DUP politicians…
On creationism: “My view on the earth is that it’s a young earth. My view is [it was created in] 4000 BC.” – Edwin Poots, MLA for Lagan Valley, talking to Times columnist Mattew Parris in 2007.
From the Daily Mirror: The Tory Government accepted a string of amendments to the Budget last night, threatened with an embarrassing defeat at the hands of the DUP.
From The Guardian: Three unusable water cannon bought by Boris Johnson when he was mayor of London have been sold for scrap, at a net loss of more than £300,000.
Johnson bought the crowd-control vehicles from the German police in 2014, in anticipation of social unrest, without checking whether they could be used on London’s streets. In one of his most humiliating episodes as mayor the then home secretary Theresa May banned them from use anywhere in England and Wales. It left the capital’s taxpayers with three expensive white elephants.
The current mayor, Sadiq Khan, pledged to claw back as much money as possible on the redundant vehicles by selling them. But after almost two years the mayor’s office admitted defeat in its attempt to find a reputable buyer.
It announced on Monday that it has agreed to sell the vehicles for just £11,025. The fee recoups 3.4% of the £322,834.71 spent on the vehicles since 2014.
The 25-year-old vehicles cost £85,022 in 2014, but they were found to be riddled with faults and required expensive modification to make them road worthy. This included £32,000 to comply with the city’s low emission zone, and almost £1,000 on new stereos.
From The Independent: Europe’s press watched on in horror as once-stable Britain was plunged into yet another political crisis over its relationship with the EU on Thursday.
From the Morning Star: Theresa May, barely clinging on to her job as it is, has now lost her second Brexit secretary since the role was created, after only being in the job a matter of months. Here are all the ministers who have left their posts since the 2017 general election:
From The Guardian: Jacob Rees-Mogg, the outspoken chair of the backbench European Research Group of Brexiters, has called for a vote of no confidence in Theresa May, on the most perilous day of her premiership.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, the MP for North East Somerset, who rejected May’s Brexit deal just moments after it was published on Wednesday night, announced that he was sending a letter to Sir Graham Brady, the chair of the backbench 1922 Committee, calling for a vote of no confidence.
His decision came while May was continuing to face a barrage of questions from MPs about her Brexit deal – and while Downing Street was still reeling from a string of resignations, most damagingly that of the Brexit secretary, Dominic Raab.
In his letter, which was released to the media, Rees-Mogg suggested the prime minister had broken her word.
From The Guardian: The work and pensions secretary, Esther McVey, has become the second senior minister to quit the Tory cabinet, following the Brexit secretary, Dominic Raab, out of the door and throwing Theresa May’s government into turmoil.
McVey, an arch Brexiter who was known to be unhappy with the prime minister’s Brexit plans, said they had failed to “honour the result” of the referendum and had crossed her own red lines for leaving the EU.
During a tense five-hour cabinet meeting on Wednesday, McVey twice called for a vote to be taken on the deal. In her resignation letter to May, she wrote: “We have gone from no deal is better than a bad deal, to any deal is better than no deal.”
Her departure came after Raab resigned as Brexit secretary saying he “cannot in good conscience” support the deal agreed by the cabinet, kicking off what was expected to be a day of turmoil for the prime minister as she struggles to retain control of her party.
One of Raab’s junior ministers, Suella Braverman, a former chair of the hardline Brexit ERG group of Tory backbenchers, also quit, saying that the public would see the plans as “a betrayal”.
From The Guardian: Jo Johnson has resigned from the government, saying he cannot support Theresa May’s Brexit deal, and MPs are being offered a choice between “vassalage and chaos”.
The MP for Orpington and rail minister published an article saying he could not vote for the deal which May is expected to bring back to parliament within weeks – and instead would be campaigning for a second referendum.
“It has become increasingly clear to me that the withdrawal agreement, which is being finalised in Brussels and Whitehall even as I write, will be a terrible mistake,” he said in an online article.
Jo Johnson said the public were being offered “an agreement that will leave our country economically weakened, with no say in the EU rules it must follow and years of uncertainty for business” or a no-deal Brexit “that I know as a transport minister will inflict untold damage on our nation”.
“To present the nation with a choice between two deeply unattractive outcomes, vassalage and chaos, is a failure of British statecraft on a scale unseen since the Suez crisis.”