Tuesday, 28 May 2024

Theresa May Signals Openness to Brexit Compromise, but Hurdles Persist

LONDON — With the clock ticking down toward last-minute talks in Brussels on Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union, Prime Minister Theresa May this weekend took another step away from hard-line anti-Europe lawmakers in her Conservative Party and sought to portray herself as committed to compromise talks that stalled last week.

But opposition Labour leaders on Sunday morning maintained that Mrs. May had not yet bent to any of their demands on the withdrawal, known as Brexit. And whatever overtures she makes to Labour, analysts said, she will struggle to guarantee that her successor as prime minister or a future Parliament would not rip up any compromise deal — a major sticking point in the cross-party talks.

Mrs. May this week was expected to seek another delay to Britain’s departure from European leaders who have expressed anger at her reluctance to change strategy only days before they were to meet to consider her request. She is also trying to pressure Labour lawmakers who may be searching for an excuse to back a deal to avoid being seen as thwarting Brexit.

But while Mrs. May appeared to soften her tone in a statement late Saturday, any compromise talks face an extremely challenging road ahead.

“Presumably, there is some aspect of trying to convince the E.U. of her good faith in those talks,” said Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London. But he said the European leaders, now schooled in the stubborn realities of domestic British politics, were likely to see that a compromise between Mrs. May and Labour’s leader, Jeremy Corbyn, remained very far off.

“The other game she’s playing,” Professor Bale said, “is to try to prove to everybody outside the country and inside the country that she’s genuinely tried, and therefore the only solution is to back her original deal.”

That would most likely take the form of government efforts to allow Parliament to vote on a series of different Brexit plans, from her deal to softer proposals preferred by Labour lawmakers. Parliament has tried that before, only to find themselves unable to give any plan a majority of votes. But Mrs. May has suggested she may try to restart the process and put the government’s weight behind whichever plan had the most support.

Mrs. May had vowed for months that she would back only a Brexit plan that eventually took Britain out of Europe’s main economic structures, but on Saturday night she suggested that a compromise could be worked out around a more limited goal: regaining control over immigration from continental Europe.

That would open the door to a compromise plan that met some of Labour’s demands, namely for Britain to remain in a European customs union. Britain would not charge tariffs on European products under such a plan, preventing the country from striking trade deals with other countries but also preserving reasonably frictionless trade with the bloc, Britain’s biggest trading partner.

But government officials said on Sunday morning that any suggestions of openness to a customs union compromise were speculative. And Baroness Sharmishta Chakrabarti, a senior official in the Labour Party, said that the prime minister had not yet budged on the substance of any compromise.

“As yet, there’s been not a jot of movement from the government, and that just isn’t going to break the deadlock, I’m afraid,” Baroness Chakrabarti said in an interview on Sky News. She added, “That is worrying to me, because the clock is running down.”

Cross-party talks between Mrs. May and Mr. Corbyn stalled on Friday, and neither the government nor Labour officials gave any indication on Sunday of a plan for further talks. British news media reports said Mrs. May had argued in talks with Labour that her original plan, while it did not explicitly keep Britain in the customs union, achieved the same goal by other means. Her plan has been voted down three times in Parliament.

Mrs. May’s statement on Saturday appeared to be an effort to signal new openness to those talks, suggesting that a deal could be worked out so long as it ended free movement, the right of Europeans to work and travel throughout the bloc. Labour also formally supports ending free movement, though it has lately also supported plans that would preserve it.

“The fact is that on Brexit there are areas where the two main parties agree,” Mrs. May said. “We both want to end free movement, we both want to leave with a good deal, and we both want to protect jobs.”

Mrs. May conceded that months of trying to convert hard-line anti-Europe Conservative lawmakers to her deal had failed.

Mr. Corbyn is facing a swell of pressure from within his party to reject any compromise that does not include giving Britons a second public vote on leaving Europe with a deal or canceling Brexit altogether.

That goes well beyond what Mrs. May said on Saturday that she was willing to consider.

What awaits Mrs. May if she agrees to a compromise deal is perhaps an even bigger tremor in the Conservative Party. Some Conservative lawmakers have threatened new attempts to oust her if she allows Brexit to be delayed long enough that Britons are asked to vote in European Parliament elections in May. (Their options for how to remove her, though, are limited after an earlier attempt failed.)

Reports in the British news media on Sunday said that Mrs. May was offering legal guarantees to protect Labour lawmakers from their biggest fear — that a staunch pro-Brexit successor to Mrs. May would rip up the parties’ compromise plan and embark on a much more complete split with Europe.

(The move was described in The Sunday Times, a British newspaper, as the “Boris lock,” a nod to Boris Johnson, the extreme anti-Europe lawmaker who is angling to follow Mrs. May as prime minister and may be inclined to tear up her plan.)

But the outlines of Britain’s future relationship with Europe, including a possible customs union, would be made in a nonbinding part of Mrs. May’s exit deal, making it difficult to protect from future attempts to derail it.

Professor Bale, of Queen Mary University, said that while she might be trying to provide cover for Labour lawmakers already inclined to back her deal, there was little of substance she could offer them.

“Any guarantees given to Labour on that score would not be worth the paper they’re written on,” he said.

In the backdrop of Mrs. May’s efforts to temper her approach is a chorus of European leaders accusing Mrs. May of having so far failed to come up with a fresh plan to break months of Parliamentary stalemate.

French officials went so far as to say that if Mrs. May failed to outline a new plan with “credible political backing,” they would treat it as a decision to greenlight a no-deal exit, a possibility that experts say would be disastrous for Britain’s economy.

European leaders will meet on Wednesday to consider Mrs. May’s request for another delay to Brexit. The Irish prime minister, Leo Varadkar, whose country stands to be badly affected by a no-deal exit, said he expected European leaders to postpone Brexit to avert that outcome, however angry they might be about Britain’s conduct.

Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, was pushing European leaders to offer Mrs. May a one-year extension for Brexit while keeping open the possibility of an earlier withdrawal if Britain ratifies a deal.

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