Amber Rudd, who rejoined the Cabinet days ago, declared the House of Commons WILL block No Deal – directly contradicting her boss Theresa May
Amber Rudd declared the House of Commons WILL block No Deal (Image: Getty)
Dan Bloom, Online Political Editor – MIRROR|AIWA! NO!|Amber Rudd, who rejoined the Cabinet days ago, declared the House of Commons WILL block No Deal – directly contradicting her boss Theresa May
Theresa May’s threat to hurl Britain into a No Deal Brexit was brutally punctured today by one of her biggest allies.
An exclusive Express.co.uk poll reveals 86 percent of readers reject Mrs May’s draft Brexit deal (Image: GETTY IMAGES)
THERESA May’s Brexit deal has been overwhelmingly rejected by Express.co.uk readers, with an exclusive poll revealing 86 percent are against the Prime Minister’s plan.
Theresa May has drafted staunch supporter Amber Rudd back into the cabinet as the work and pensions secretary and took personal control of the final phase of Brexit negotiations. The prime minister sought to shore up her support hours after Michael Gove decided to remain in the cabinet, despite having told her on Thursday he believed her Brexit deal was “not a runner” and will not get through parliament.
The Guardian
|HARVEY GAVIN, EXPRESS|AIWA! NO!|THERESA May’s Brexit deal has been overwhelmingly rejected by Express.co.uk readers, with an exclusive poll revealing 86 percent are against the Prime Minister’s plan.
The online ‘People’s Poll’, which has been live on Express.co.uk for just 36 hours, has already received more than 69,500 responses. As of 9.05pm GMT, Just 9.9 percent (6,880) of respondents said they supported the deal while 3.7 percent (2,592) said they were unsure. The remaining 60,081 who took part said they rejected her draft Brexit deal.
The shock results comes as Mrs May desperately battles to muster support for the draft agreement struck with Brussels.
The PM is fighting for her political survival on multiple fronts as pressure mounts following a barrage of resignations yesterday – including Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab and Pensions Secretary Esther McVey.
Furious Tory Brexiteers dismayed at Mrs May’s deal have called for a vote of no confidence in her leadership, with 22 MPs having publicly confirmed they have submitted letters.
Meanwhile, there is huge doubt over whether Mrs May can persuade enough MPs to back her deal in the Commons.
Conservative eurosceptics and her unionist allies in Northern Ireland have all warned they will vote against it.
And as things stand, Mrs May would need dozens of Labour MPs to defy the whip and vote with the Government.
But Jeremy Corbyn’s party has said his party will stick to its guns and reject it, insisting the deal does not meet his six “tests”.
French Minister for European Affairs Nathalie Loiseau | Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images
Andrea Leadsom, the Commons leader, has warned the Prime Minister that MPs would not support any deal that would keep Britain locked in a backstop arrangement with Brussels.
She told BBC Radio 5 Live the UK “cannot be held against its will” in a possible customs union with the EU, adding: “It cannot be a decision that can be overturned by the European Union, it must be capable for the United Kingdom to decide to leave that customs arrangement.”
|AIWA! NO|French Europe minister Nathalie Loiseau said any decision taken to end the backstop arrangement cannot be made by the United Kingdom alone and must involve the remaining 27 European Union countries.
Brexiteers in Mrs May’s Cabinet have demanded the inclusion of the mechanism that would unilaterally trigger a UK exit from any customs union arrangement in the backstop, the insurance policy to prevent a hard border in Ireland.
EU negotiators rejected this and reportedly told their UK counterparts that the European Court of Justice would have to be involved in the arbitration of any potential mechanism.
Ahead of the meeting, Ms Loiseau rejected the possibility of an independent mechanism being included in the backstop to help the Prime Minister with her domestic negotiations.
The French Europe minister told reporters: “If we end any sort of temporary arrangement this is to be bilateral decision from the EU27 and from the UK at the same time and we have to know in that moment what sort of solution there is for the Irish border.”
Technical-level negotiations will continue between the British and EU teams as they move “closer and closer” to seal a Brexit deal, according to one EU diplomat.
A technical deal is once again within days of conclusion but Mrs May is struggling to win political backing from her Cabinet as further splits emerge in her Conservative Party.
UN: Over 7 million Yemeni children face ‘serious’ famine threat
A Yemeni man carries his child who is suffering from malnutrition into a treatment center at a hospital in Sanaa. (AFP)
‘More than half’ of the 14 million people at serious risk of famine in the impoverished country are children
Over 6,000 children have either been killed or sustained serious injuries since 2015
|CRIMSON TAZVINZWA, AIWA! NO!|HODEIDAH: Over seven million children face a serious threat of famine in Yemen and ending the country’s war will not save all of them, the UN children’s agency said.
A UNICEF report entitled “Born into War” offers a detailed look on how Yemeni children have been scarred by years of violence, displacement, disease, poverty, undernutrition and a lack of access to basic services including water, health care and education. “More than 5,000 children have been killed or injured in the violence — an average of five children every day since March 2015,” the report said, adding that more than 11 million children needed urgent humanitarian assistance — more than half of the country’s child population — as they did not have access to safe drinking water or adequate sanitation. “An estimated 1.8 million children are acutely malnourished, including nearly 400,000 severely acutely malnourished children who are fighting for their lives,” the report said.
“Today, 1.8 million children under the age of five are facing acute malnutrition, and 400,000 are affected by severe acute malnutrition,” said Geert Cappelaere, regional director of UNICEF.
OVER 100 CHILDREN ARE DYING OF HUNGER EVERY DAY
The war in Yemen has been raging for three years now which has left the country in the grip of the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis.
A deadly triple threat – bombs, disease and hunger – is threatening an entire generation of children.
The conflict has left many families unable to afford food and water. And millions of children don’t know when or if their next meal will come.
As the battle intensifies in the port city of Hodeidah – the country’s main gateway for food, fuel and humanitarian supplies – millions more could face starvation.
Yemen is on the brink of the worst famine in 100 years.
“More than half” of the 14 million people at serious risk of famine in the impoverished country are children, Cappelaere said late on Wednesday.
“Ending the war is not enough,” he said, referring to a more than three-year conflict that pits the government supported by a Saudi-led military coalition against Houthi militia.
“What we need is to stop the war and (to create) a government mechanism that puts at the center the people and children.
“The war is exacerbating the situation that was already bad before because of years of underdevelopment” in the Arab world’s poorest nation, Cappelaere said.
He welcomed a call by the UN on Wednesday to relaunch peace talks within a month.
He said efforts to come up with a solution in the next 30 days were “critical” to improving aid distribution and saving lives. Cappelaere said that over 6,000 children have either been killed or sustained serious injuries since 2015.
“These are the numbers we have been able to verify, but we can safely assume that the number is higher, much higher,” he said.
Saudi Arabia and its allies entered the war to bolster Yemeni President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi after the Iran-backed Houthis took over the capital Sanaa.
Since 2015, more than 10,000 people have been killed and some 22 million — three quarters of the population — are in need of food aid, according to the UN.
Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond, leaves 11 Downing Street, in central London, Britain March 21, 2018.REUTERS/Toby Melville
Philip Hammond has admitted there would need to be a new Budget in the event of Britain crashing out of the European Union without a deal.
The chancellor said the Treasury would be unable to fulfil the prime minister’s commitment to end the era of austerity if negotiators failed to secure deal.
“We would need to look at a different strategy and, frankly, we’d need to have a new budget that set out a different strategy for the future,” Hammond told Sky News on Sunday.
|AIWA! NO!|Philip Hammond has admitted there would need to be a new Budget in the event of Britain crashing out of the European Union without a deal.
The chancellor revealed on the eve of the Budget the government would need to look at a “different approach” to the future of the UK’s economy if Theresa May fails to secure a deal with the bloc.
He also indicated the Treasury would be unable to fulfil the prime minister’s commitment to end the era of austerity if negotiators failed to secure deal.
Mr Hammond’s remarks were immediately seized upon by the Tory MP and prominent Eurosceptic, Jacob Rees-Mogg, who dubbed the Treasury the “last bastion of Remoanerism” and described the chancellor’s admission as a “punishment Budget.”
Pressed on whether the government would be able to end austerity without a Brexit deal, Mr Hammond replied: “If we were to leave the European Union without any deal – and I think that’s an extremely unlikely situation but of course we have to prepare and plan for all eventualities, as any prudent government would – if we were to find ourselves in that situation then we would need to take a different approach to the future of Britain’s economy.”
He added on Sky News’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday programme: “We would need to look at a different strategy and, frankly, we’d need to have a new budget that set out a different strategy for the future.”
Asked if Britain would be worse-off after Brexit, regardless of whether there was a deal, Mr Hammond added: “Over my lifetime, people’s living standards have almost doubled and we want to go on seeing that growth in living standards so that we can make good on our promise to the next generation that they too will be better-off than their parents.”
The chancellor also hinted he would use his Commons statement on Monday to provide additional funding to smooth the transition to universal credit amid warnings low income families are being driven into debt.
“I’ve already put over £2 billion pounds into, over the last two Budgets, into smoothing that transition,” he said.
“We continue to look at how this process is working and if we find cliff edges and difficulties, frictions in the move from the old benefits system to universal credit then of course will always try to smooth those out and be pragmatic about it.”
Appearing after Mr Hammond on the same programme, his opposite number, John McDonnell, said he was “really shocked” by the chancellor’s interview, accusing him of having a “callous complacency about this week’s Budget, and the future”.
‘HISTORIC ERROR’ Spain PM blasts Brexit and says Britain will be PUNISHED for mistake
SPAIN’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has called Brexit a “historic error” in a bid to warn against those wanting independence in Catalonia.
La MoncloaPedro Sánchez Pérez-Castejón, president of the Government of Spain
LAURA MOWAT, EXPRESS|AIWA! NO!|Mr Sanchez claimed Britain’s exit from the European Union (EU) will leave it with less influence on the world stage, branding Brexit a “tragedy”.
He said that the Brexit outcome is particularly important in Spain due to the number of Spanish people living in the UK, the fishing industry in Spain and the businesses sharing links to the UK.
He said: “Unfortunately, it was not possible to reject the request of the U.K. to withdraw from the EU.
Daily ExpressBrexit news: Spain’s Pedro Sanchez ridicules Britain’s obsession as he says UK will suffer | World | News | Express.co.uk
“Brexit is a tragedy for the British and for the Europeans.”
Brexit is a tragedy for the British and for the Europeans
Pedro Sanchez
Speaking to Catalonians, who voted for independence from Spain in October last year in a non-binding referendum, he said: “Let’s take note of foreign mistakes, let’s learn from the historic error which Brexit represents for the United Kingdom and think about the prosperity of our citizens.”
He added: “There are more things that unite us than those that separate us, let’s give priority to the union of Europe and Spain.”
In a cutting remark, Spain’s premier said people in the UK spend 24 hours a day thinking about Brexit and “the Europeans think about it for four minutes every trimester”.
Mr Sanchez said Spain will need to put emergency measures in place if there were to be a no-deal Brexit and called the EU divorce a “tragedy”.
The Catalonian referendum ignited the nation last year (Image: GETTY)
Mr Sanchez told the UN Brexit brings an opportunity for a new relationship between the UK overseas territory Gibraltar and the EU.
Spain and UK authorities are exploring bilateral arrangements regarding Gibraltar following Brexit.
Mr Sanchez said: “The Gibraltar protocol is resolved, it’s been closed with the British government, and what we are doing now is working out the four memorandums for the bilateral relationship between the government of Spain and the UK.”
The International Air Transport Association has warned the number of flights between the UK and Spain could collapse by 95 per cent if no Brexit deal is agreed.
LONDON |Reuters|AIWA! NO!| – The United Kingdom and the European Union are close to agreeing a Brexit deal, Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab said on Thursday.
Dominic Raab addressed the Conservative Party conference, as he called for respect for the result of the referendum on Britain’s EU membership that saw 52% of UK voters opt for exit from the European bloc.
“We have made good progress. We are close to agreeing a deal,” Raab said. “There certainly is a risk of a no deal especially if the European Union engage in a deliberately intransigent approach.”
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