Skip to main content

Party members join EU in rejecting May’s Brexit plan

While Prime Minister Theresa May is doggedly defending her Brexit plan, delegates at her party´s annual conference have joined the EU in writing it off — and suggest her own time in office is limited.

Conservative party members queued for two hours on Sunday to see leading Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg denounce May´s “Chequers plan” for close economic ties with the EU, one of half a dozen events he is addressing in Birmingham.

Across town, several Tory Eurosceptic MPs joined former UK Independence Party (UKIP) leader Nigel Farage in demanding a clean break with the EU, at a rally attended by around 500 people waving British flags.

Similar crowds are expected at a conference event on Tuesday with former minister Boris Johnson, a rival for May´s job who has condemned her plan as “deranged”.

“The prime minister is completely out of touch with the majority of party members,” Michael Wilkins, 53, told AFP at the rally, seated near a giant poster saying “Save Brexit”.

Many eurosceptic Tories want May to ditch her plan for Britain to follow EU rules for goods, and instead secure a looser free trade agreement for after Brexit in March next year.

May insists her way is the only one that protects manufacturing supply lines and keeps open the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland.

After EU leaders in Salzburg last month rejected the plan, she demanded they show her “respect” in a defiant statement that went down well with party members.

“It was the sort of vigour we have been wanting to see from her,” said Alexandra Philips, a former UKIP member who is now a member of the Conservatives.

Listen to the people 

Many of her critics have accused May of a lack of enthusiasm over Brexit, citing the fact she opposed leaving the EU in the 2016 referendum.

“It is stupid that after the biggest vote we have had in British history, we´ve got someone in charge who didn´t believe in it,” said Stuart Lloyd, 50, from near Birmingham, at the rally.

He backed Johnson as a new leader, and “if not him, someone with those kind of views”.

Inside the conference centre, among the stalls for Conservative key rings, coasters and tea towels, discussion of Brexit and May´s future is on everybody´s lips.

“I don´t want Chequers, it keeps us part of the common market. We want a clean break,” said Imelda Dixon, 71, from Derby in central England, sitting with her husband Alan.

She accused May of failing to acknowledge the reality around her, saying: “It´s the general election all over again. Me, me, me — I just want her to listen to the people, but she´s not.”

During the campaign for last year´s disastrous snap election, in which the Conservatives lost their parliamentary majority, May refused to accept she had made a mistake in a key policy on social care.

However, many delegates are wary of the chaos it might unleash to change leaders now.

“I think it´s got to wait until after Brexit,” said one, 72-year-old Alan Dixon.

Acting like children 

May gave a speech and took questions in a private meeting with delegates on Sunday morning, and one party member said she had changed his mind.

“I´m not a great fan of Chequers but after hearing her, I´m prepared to give her a chance,” said Martin Williams, a 32-year-old councillor in Somerset, western England.

He added: “I´m a great supporter of Boris but… we need to stop acting like children.

“There will be plenty of time for people to think about their futures, but now is not the time.”

Outside the conference centre, hundreds of people holding signs saying “Bollocks to Brexit” and “It´s not too late” held a march calling for a second referendum.

One protester, former Conservative London councillor Nicholas McLean, lamented the influence hardliners had on his party.

“Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg, there´s a long list of people who see the issue from a blinkered point of view, not at all realistic — they have betrayed the party,” he told AFP.

 

The post Party members join EU in rejecting May’s Brexit plan appeared first on ARYNEWS.



from ARYNEWS https://ift.tt/2NdRs5f
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Trump says he urged team to ‘slow’ COVID-19 testing

US President Donald Trump said Saturday he was encouraging health officials in his administration to slow down coronavirus testing, arguing that increased tests lead to more cases being discovered. The president has claimed falsely on several occasions that surges of COVID-19 in several states can be explained by greater numbers of diagnostic tests. At his first rally since the outbreak forced nationwide shutdowns in March, Trump told the crowd in Tulsa, Oklahoma that testing was a “double-edged sword.” The United States — which has more deaths and cases than any other country — has carried out more than 25 million coronavirus tests, placing it outside the top 20 countries in the world, per capita. “Here is the bad part: When you do testing to that extent, you are going to find more people, you will find more cases,” Trump argued. “So I said to my people ‘slow the testing down.’ They test and they test.” It was not clear from Trump’s tone if he was playing to the crowd, who ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sir Anwer Pervez, richest Pakistani British businessman, loses £432m in pandemic

Sir Anwar Pervez OBE, the founder and chairman of Bestway Cash & Carry has lost £432 million during the coronavirus pandemic to bring him down to No 50 on the richest British people list. The list has 1,000 people and is published by the Sunday Times newspaper . Pervez was at No 42 previously.  The 2020 list of the UK’s richest shows its first fall in wealth in a decade as Britain’s wealthiest people lost tens of billions of pounds in the coronavirus pandemic, the Sunday Times reported in its Rich List 2020. The newspaper, which has produced the respected annual ranking of the country’s 1,000 wealthiest people since 1989, found the past two months had resulted in the super-rich losing £54 billion ($65 billion). More than half of the billionaires in Britain had seen drops in their worth by as much as £6b, a decrease in their collective wealth unprecedented since 2009 and the financial crisis. The Hinduja brothers, who topped last year’s list with a £22b fortune, saw among ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Despite reservations about jury, Pakistan to implement FATF reforms: envoy

WASHINGTON: Despite its reservations about the fairness of the jury which is to determine Pakistan’s performance against terror financing, the government is committed to implementing its action plan for dealing with this issue, says Islamabad’s Washington envoy Asad Majeed Khan. In a conversation with a prominent US scholar George Perkovich, recorded at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington on Monday afternoon, Ambassador Khan said the actions that Pakistan had taken so far to eliminate terror financing were “reflective of the political will”. “We feel that we have done a lot. We are also clear and determined to do more,” said the envoy while responding to a question about a meeting of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) held in Orlando last week, which asked Pakistan to implement its own action plan for eliminating terror financing by October. Failing to do so could put Pakistan on a blacklist of violators and bring strict economic sanctions too. “But we w...
Post a Comment
Read more