Senior Conservatives have urged Rishi Sunak to ignore “shrill” hardliners over new post-Brexit arrangements with the European Union, warning that failure to reach a deal risks the party's slim election chances.
As anger mounts among Brexiteers over a possible deal, the prime minister has been told that unhappy ministers could resign.
However, senior Tories urged Mr Sunak to call their bluff. Health minister Maria Caulfield, who herself quit Theresa May's frontbench over her Brexit plan, urged Tory MPs to “support the prime minister”.
And Tobias Ellwood, a former minister who chairs the Commons defence committee, told The Independent: “Allowing this to drag on, unresolved, shows how increasingly out of touch we look on both sides in the Irish Sea.
“The prime minister should ignore the shrill voices that opine after a model of Brexit that a growing population can no longer relate to and will punish us at the next election if we don’t moderate our now-dated stance.”
Brexiteers say they are prepared to force a showdown vote in parliament on any agreement between the EU and the UK.
The prime minister, who does not have to offer MPs a vote, could be forced to rely on Sir Keir Starmer's Labour Party for votes.
But one former cabinet minister told The Independent: “What matters is getting [the Northern Ireland protocol] resolved. Because if it is not resolved that plays into Labour’s hands. Labour will say: ‘Look, it can’t be resolved until there is a change of government’.”
He also hit out at Tory MPs in the Brexiteer European Research Group (ERG), saying they had had “undue influence,” adding: “I don’t know why they have been indulged like they have”.
Another Tory MP and senior Sunak supporter said he “100 per cent” agreed that failing to forge a deal would strengthen Labour’s position, and also urged the PM to ignore the ERG. The MP said: “This is just some hardliners bluffing. They are tiny in numbers and most MPs remain behind the prime minister.”
Home secretary Suella Braverman on Monday hinted at a potential cabinet split as she warned Mr Sunak not to ditch the controversial Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, devised by Boris Johnson, in return for a Brexit deal.
But former justice secretary Sir Robert Buckland said he no longer believed the bill, which would tear up the protocol, had legal justification. It had been formulated during a deadlock in negotiations between the EU and the UK, which was no longer the case, he said.
Mr Sunak’s former cabinet colleague Jacob Rees-Mogg accused the prime minister of falling into the same trap as Theresa May on the issue.
He likened the prime minister’s tactics to that of his predecessor, who was brought down by Tory MPs after failing to get her own Brexit deal through parliament.
“I don’t know why so much political capital has been spent on something without getting the DUP and the ERG on side first,” he told his ConservativeHome podcast.
“This is very similar to what happened with Theresa May. So a story would appear in The Times and Downing Street would say, ‘No, this isn’t quite right, it isn’t at all right.’ And then a week or two would go by and it would turn out to be completely right and they would hope that people would just conveniently fall in behind the announced policy.”
Meanwhile, former Conservative leader Lord Hague warned “most voters want neither a “Remainer plot” nor Brexit purity” and that wrecking a deal “would be a huge error”.
“For Conservatives it would mean they are incapable of putting Brexit arguments behind them, adding to Labour's attacks at the next election and steadily discrediting the entire project of leaving the EU,” he said in a column in The Times.
After a meeting between the ERG and members of the DUP on Tuesday night former cabinet minister Simon Clarke warned there was a “long way to go” before a deal was struck that Brexiteers could support.
DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson also said that would require further substantial concessions from Brussels.
The EU had to accept that goods produced in Northern Ireland and traded with the rest of the UK should not be subject to EU rules, he said.
He added: “We can’t have a situation where businesses in Northern Ireland are able to bring goods in from Great Britain and sell them as UK standard products, and make the same product themselves in Northern Ireland but they are required to make them to EU standards. That is not acceptable.”
A UK Government spokesperson said:“Our priority is protecting the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement and preserving political stability in Northern Ireland and the UK internal market.
“Any solution on the Protocol must address the range of issues on the ground in Northern Ireland.
“We are currently engaging in intensive scoping talks with the EU to find solutions to these problems.”
