Brexiteer backlash at Theresa May over plan for open-ended transition

Critics have slammed the Brexit letter sent by Tory MPs to Theresa May as nothing more than a “ransom note”.

Addressing Austrian business leaders, he said the commitment offered a “clear read across” into the forthcoming talks on a free-trade deal with the remaining 27 member states.

With no majority, she knows that she needs to keep the dozens and dozens of Brexit-backing Tory MPs broadly with her for her own government’s survival.

UK Prime Minister Theresa May has met with her Cabinet ministers at Chequers to hammer out the government’s definitive position on a post-Brexit relationship while having to deny claims that it is seeking an open-ended transition period between March 2019 and the final severing of institutional ties with Brussels. May was still insisting that European Union migrants arriving during the “transition” period would be treated differently to those who arrived before, but Home Office sources now say creating a two-tier system in time will be hard.

The Cabinet is agreed that Britain can not stay inside the EU’s customs union, as this would prevent it from negotiating its own independent trade deals.

The group of 62 MPs in her party demanded a tougher approach in a number of areas, including Britain’s right to move away from European Union rules after leaving, and the terms of any transition period.

“We’ll pressure MPs to consider the national interest and put Remain back on the table in a vote on the final European Union deal”. “In trying to undermine that the ERG are asking the government to sacrifice the economy on the altar of ideology”.

But a set of slides setting out the commission’s negotiating position stated: “UK views on regulatory issues in the future relationship including “three basket approach” are not compatible with the principles in the EuCo (European Council) guidelines”.

Inspired in part by French President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist En Marche movement, the party is targeting voters who “feel politically homeless and abandoned”, co-leader Sandra Khadhouri said at a launch event this week. “Full marks to Davis for. putting an end to the dreams of some that Brexit would herald some low or minimal regulatory nirvana”, she wrote.

Three Scottish Conservatives have signed a letter from pro-Brexit MPs to the prime minister calling on the United Kingdom to make a clean break with the EU.

Paul Blomfield, Labour’s Shadow Brexit Minister, commenting on the letter from the 62 MPs said:”This letter exposes the deep divisions that run through the heart of this Conservative Government”.

Shadow Brexit minister Paul Blomfield said: “It is clearer than ever that Theresa May can not deliver the Brexit deal Britain needs”.

Ministers say a planned “status quo” period after Brexit will end on a “fixed date” despite critics suggesting it could “last indefinitely”.

A Downing Street source said simply: “We welcome contributions from across the party”.