Theresa May’s International Trade Secretary Liam Fox joined forces with Democratic Unionist Party leader Arlene Foster and former Brexit Secretaries David Davis and Dominic Raab to call on the PM to renegotiate the Irish backstop in her withdrawal deal with the EU.
“I think that it’s very difficult to support the deal if we don’t get changes to the backstop, I don’t think it will get through — I’m not even sure the Cabinet will agree for it to be put to the House of Commons,” Fox told the BBC’s Politics Live TV program.
The deal has already been agreed by Cabinet ministers including Fox, so the comments from the committed Brexiteer appear to be a public break with government policy and joint Cabinet responsibility.
Some MPs argue the backstop, designed to avoid a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland, will leave the U.K. beholden to EU rules indefinitely.
May delayed a House of Commons vote on her Brexit deal, which had been due to take place Tuesday night, after it became apparent that it would not get MPs’ approval. Wednesday, Graham Brady, the chairman of the 1922 committee of backbench Tory MPs, confirmed he has received the 48 letters of no confidence — from 15 percent of current Conservative MPs — needed to trigger a vote of confidence in May’s leadership of the Conservative Party.
In a statement, Raab said: “The U.K. needs a unilateral exit mechanism from the backstop, but we can give the Irish government assurances that we would put in place specific measures to guarantee no return to a hard border,” according to Reuters.