Thursday 20 September 2018 12:28 am

Davis set to savage Chequers as May awaits EU verdict on key proposals

Theresa May last night urged EU leaders to stop trying to break up the UK as she warned there were just two months left to strike a Brexit deal.

Speaking directly to her counterparts at a dinner in Salzburg last night, the Prime Minister made it clear that if an agreement were not reached by the end of a special Brexit summit pencilled in for mid-November, the UK would not seek to extend the negotiations.

She told the 27 EU leaders to abandon their Irish backstop proposal – which would see Northern Ireland operate a different customs policy to the rest of the UK.

“The Commission’s proposal for this protocol – that I should assent to a legal separation of the United Kingdom into two customs territories – is not credible,” said May.

Her comments came on a day when both sides seemed to further entrench their negotiating positions, with May writing an article in Die Welt which called on the EU to stop demanding “the unacceptable” on the Irish border backstop – in what appeared to be a direct appeal to German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

But Brussels seemed to be unmoved by the plea, with European Council president Donald Tusk insisting the UK’s position on the Irish border needs to be “reworked and further negotiated”.

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EU leaders have gathered in Salzburg (Source: Getty)

Under the EU’s plans, Northern Ireland would effectively stay part of the Single Market and customs union if no trade deal is reached between the UK and Brussels by March 2019.

The EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, has been seeking to “de-dramatise” the row, saying he was “ready to improve” his offer by conceding that customs checks could take place in factories and forecourts away from the British border.

However, an ally of May has dismissed this proposal, saying: “There is nothing new here.”

The UK’s version of the backstop would use technology to monitor goods moving over the Ireland/UK border without the need for checkpoints or new infrastructure.

An emergency Brexit summit was planned for mid-November as fears grew that an agreement would not be reached by the next get-together of EU leaders in Brussels on 18 October.

Speaking on LBC radio last night, Brexit secretary Dominic Raab piled pressure on European leaders with time for a deal running out.

“Now is the moment when the EU needs to shift, I think they understand that,” he said.

Raab insisted the UK would be leaving the EU on 29 March 2019 whether a deal was reached or not, and also revealed that while the Cabinet had discussed the possibility of extending the Article 50 negotiation process, it had been dismissed by ministers.

EU leaders are set to gather without May to discuss the UK’s negotiating plan – dubbed the Chequers agreement – over lunch in Salzburg today.

Tusk will then meet May to deliver the verdict on the proposal, which seeks to keep the UK tied to EU rules on goods but not services. The meeting is scheduled to take place just hours after a planned attack on the Chequers agreement by May’s former Brexit secretary, David Davis.

At a speech in Munich, Davis is due to brand the plan as “devoid of democracy” and a “non-starter”. Davis quit the government in July in protest at May’s negotiating stance. Morning Wire revealed earlier this month he is set to unveil his own Brexit trade plan in the upcoming weeks.

In his speech, Davis is expected to say: “At Lancaster and Mansion House, the Prime Minister promised to return control over our law, our money and our borders. These promises were in our manifesto too. But the Chequers plan crosses on all of those red lines. The EU is often correctly described as having a democratic deficit. But Chequers is devoid of democracy altogether.”

The political stalemate came as the Bank of England’s chief economist Andy Haldane used a speech in Estonia to warn that “a key theme among companies over recent quarters has been uncertainty surrounding Brexit”.