Trade minister Liam Fox urges MPs to back Prime Minister in Brexit vote
Trade secretary Liam Fox has urged his Tory colleagues to fall in line ahead of a showdown between Prime Minister Theresa May and her party’s hardline Brexiters in a vote this afternoon.
The motion asks parliament to reiterate its support for a previous Brexit vote, when MPs passed an amendment allowing May to return to Brussels to negotiate the crucial issue of the Irish backstop.
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“Our European partners will be watching our debate and listening today to see if they get the impression that if they were to make those concessions parliament would definitely deliver. There's a danger that we send the wrong signals,” Fox told the BBC’s Today programme.
The so-called Brady amendment, which passed last month, also saw MPs vote to prevent a no-deal Brexit.
Hardline members of the pro-Brexit European Research Group (ERG) have warned they will vote down the motion today, fearing it will mean a no-deal Brexit has been effectively ruled out.
The Prime Minister has denied the motion amounts to a tacit rejection of no-deal, saying the UK will leave the EU on 29 March whether or not a deal is in place.
But a defeat would be an embarrassment for May, who had seen the motion as little more than a symbolic vote.
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Tory MP and ERG member Steve Baker dismissed Fox’s claims that the EU would be “hanging on a non-binding motion”.
“Conservative MPs really ought not to be associated with anything, express or implied, which seems to take no deal off the table,” he wrote on Twitter.