Brexit news latest: DUP dismisses Michel Barnier proposal as Theresa May says EU withdrawal could be cancelled if deal rejected
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Your support makes all the difference.Theresa May pleaded with her EU counterparts to give ground in a key speech just days before MPs vote on her Brexit deal.
Speaking in Grimsby on Friday, the prime minister said “no one knows” what will happen if her plan is rejected, warning Brexiteers: “We may never leave at all”.
Chief EU negotiator Michel Barnier reacted to Ms May’s speech in a series of tweets. He said the UK would have the unilateral right to leave the customs union, but also made clear Northern Ireland would have to stay inside it.
However, the apparent concession was dismissed by the DUP as neither “realistic nor sensible”. Brexit secretary Stephen Barclay suggested the EU plan was simply a return to an earlier version of the backstop which had already been rejected.
Ms May accused Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn of supporting “a divisive second referendum that would take the UK right back to square one”.
Mr Corbyn fired back by warning the prime minister not to make a third attempt to ram through her deal if it’s defeated next week, saying it must be “the end of the road”.
Here's how the day unfolded:
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Here is the extract from Downing Street released on Thursday evening ahead of the prime minister's speech on Brexit this afternoon. The location of her speech is Grimsby - an area where 71 per cent of residents voted to leave the EU in June 2016.
“Just as MPs will face a big choice next week, the EU has to make a choice too.
“We are both participants in this process.
“It is in the European interest for the UK to leave with a deal.
“We are working with them but the decisions that the European Union makes over the next few days will have a big impact on the outcome of the vote.”
After Amber Rudd - the work and pensions secretary - was forced to apologise for referring to Diane Abbott as a "coloured woman" during a BBC radio interview on Thursday, the deputy chairman of the Conservative MP has defended her.
Conservative deputy chairman James Cleverly told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that unfortunate comments were inevitable in politics: "We all do a lot of talking on really, really sensitive matters and people sometimes make mistakes at work.
"When I've dealt with soldiers or police officers or people in local government, if I chewed them up every time they make a mistake, we'd have nothing done."
Asked about Ms Rudd's remarks, Mr Cleverly said: "The point that I've always taken is you look at what people are doing perhaps slightly more than what they are saying."
Answering a question about internet trolling during a radio interview on Thursday, Ms Rudd said: "It definitely is worse if you're a woman, and it's worst of all if you're a coloured woman.
"I know that Diane Abbott gets a huge amount of abuse and I think that's something we need to continue to call out."
Mr Cleverly told Today: "At that point, what Amber was doing was showing huge solidarity with Diane Abbott, who's been the recipient of a horrific, unbelievable, huge volume of misogynistic and racist abuse.
"Amber was showing solidarity. She used a terrible, terrible word and now we are talking about that word (rather than her message)."
Here is the story from Thursday on Ms Rudd's comments
Muslim Labour MP Naz Shah has called for an apology from Andrea Leadsom after the Commons Leader suggested Islamophobia should be treated as a Foreign Office issue.
In a letter to Theresa May, Ms Shah said: "This comment exposes profound ignorance of race issues at the top of Government. This is not a trivial matter.
"In the face of rising hate crime and an emboldened far-right movement here in Britain, how can the Government hope to combat racism when its own ministers seem to lack an understanding of the ways in which it manifests itself?"
She continued: "This is while the former chair of your party, Baroness Warsi, has been for months asking that you and (Conservative chairman) Brandon Lewis take the issue of Islamophobia seriously, which you seem to be in complete denial of. We all must be better and braver against the scourge of racism across the political spectrum and broader society."
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