4 **^ Wednesday 7 August 2019 The Daily Telegraph
Politics
Gove: EU’s refusal to talk is wrong and sad
By Camilla Tominey
ASSOCIATE EDITOR
MICHAEL GOVE has accused the EU of
refusing to negotiate over Brexit, dub-
bing the stalemate “wrong and sad”.
In an escalating war of words be-
tween Westminster and Brussels, the
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster,
who is in charge of no-deal prepara-
tions, said the EU’s position was “not in
Europe’s interests”.
The European Commission re-
sponded by insisting that it was open to
talks, but made clear Theresa May’s
Brexit agreement was “the best possi-
ble deal” the UK was going to get.
Irish premier Leo Varadkar then
doubled down by insisting that the
Withdrawal Agreement – including the
Northern Ireland backstop – could not
be re-opened.
A Downing Street source said the EUneeded to “change its stance”, saying
the Prime Minister was willing to nego-
tiate a new deal “that abolishes the
anti-democratic backstop”.
It follows reports from Brussels that
EU officials have concluded that Boris
Johnson’s administration has no inten-
tion of negotiating and its “central sce-
nario” was a no-deal break on Oct 31.
Following a meeting of the Brexit
“war cabinet”, Mr Gove insisted the
Government was ready to engage in
talks.
However, he said the EU side had to
accept a new approach was essentialafter Mrs May’s agreement was re-
jected three times by Parliament.
“We need a new approach and we
stand ready to engage with the Euro-
pean Union, to negotiate in good faith
to make sure that we can have a friendly
relationship in the future,” he said.
“We will put all our energy into mak-
ing sure we can secure a good deal, but
at the moment it is the EU that seems to
be saying they are not interested.
“They are simply saying ‘No, we
don’t want to talk’. I think that is wrong
and sad. It is not in Europe’s interests.”
Speaking on a visit to NorthernIreland, Mr Varadkar reiterated his
invitation to Mr Johnson to go to
Dublin for talks on the basis of “no pre-
conditions”.
At the same time, however, he said
the Withdrawal Agreement could not
be re-opened, although the EU could
offer “clarifications” as well as possible
changes to the Political Declaration on
the future relationship between the UK
and Brussels.
A source close to Mr Johnson said he
had “no intention of travelling any-
where only to be told nothing has
changed”. It comes as The Daily Tele-graph has learnt that Downing Street is
drafting an open letter to EU leaders
setting out why the backstop is iniqui-
tous, in order to show they are serious
about a deal.
Meanwhile, Dominic Raab, the For-
eign Secretary, began a tour of North
America yesterday as part of a bid to
“fire up” the UK’s trade relationships
with countries outside the EU.
It came after former US treasury sec-
retary Larry Summers said the UK was
“delusional” if it believed that it could
secure a post-Brexit trade deal with
Washington.Minister says stalemate in
Brexit negotiations is not
in Europe’s best interests
and calls for new approach
W
riting in these pages last
week, Nick Timothy accused
Leo Varadkar of not
understanding the Good Friday
Agreement and risking peace in
Ireland. His attack on the Taoiseach is
part of a syndicated assault on the
backstop, which actually stemmed
from the very red lines first spelt out
by Theresa May, the prime minister
that Mr Timothy was then serving.
The backstop was agreed as part of
the wider Withdrawal Agreement. It is
an insurance policy to guarantee no
detriment to existing arrangements in
Ireland for cross-border trade and
co-operation during or after further
negotiations between the UK and EU.
Brexiteers portray the backstop in
terms of EU control and now call it
undemocratic. In fact, it is supported
by a majority in Northern Ireland.
It would help to uphold the north-
south dimension of the Good Friday
Agreement as mandated by the people
of Ireland in 1998. But this would not
be at the expense of other aspects of
the agreement.
The Taoiseach has been clear that,
as co-guarantor of the agreement, he
is not only a guardian of its Strand Two- the north-south framework, which
encourages co-operation between the
North and the Republic – but also fully
mindful of its other provisions. The
terms in which he has suggested
potential deployment of its Strand
Three – managing co-operation – in a
post-Brexit scenario disprove the
caricatures by his detractors.
Mr Timothy called in Lord Trimble
to aid claims that the backstop
breaches the Good Friday Agreement.
Lord Trimble was not singly
responsible for the agreement. Neither
is he solely reliable on its
interpretation. The paper he wrote for
Policy Exchange ignores how the UK
Supreme Court ruled when the two
versions of “consent” within the
agreement were tested in relation to
Brexit. In light of those rulings, the
charge that the backstop violates the
consent principle can be seen to rest
on false premises.
Mr Varadkar reflects a considered
consensus in democratic Ireland. And
there is no need to remind the
Taoiseach about the pursuit of
“alternative arrangements”, which is
part of the very backstop text that
Brexiteers want removed. The
backstop is not intended as an end
state. Alternative arrangements need
to be developed to succeed it in the
future EU-UK relationship.
The backstop will not reduce the
incentive for the Irish government to
pursue positive future arrangements
rooted in the Good Friday Agreement.
It would be good to believe that such
an incentive would be fully shared by
the UK Government.
The backstop provides for a balance
of insurance, incentives and interests
to inform the very negotiations on a
future relationship to which the new
Prime Minister ascribes such priority.
Mark Durkan was the deputy first
minister of Northern Ireland from 2001
to 2002Backstop will
help to uphold
Good Friday
Agreement
Comment
By Mark DurkanHome Office spent £2,640 sending staff to
Crystal Maze at height of Windrush scandal
By Charles Hymas
HOME AFFAIRS EDITOR
FORTY eight Home Office officials had
an awayday at the Crystal Maze
experience at a cost of thousands of
pounds to the taxpayer at the height of
the Windrush scandal, it has emerged.
The department defended the
excursion in May last year as necessary
for the staff to get away from the
“distractions” of the office and to
“rebuild cohesion” after significant
“restructuring and recruitment”.
The details obtained under Freedom
of Information laws showed the Home
Office booked 48 tickets costing a total
of £2,639.52 on April 11 last year for a
visit on May 8, just as the department
faced allegations of wrongly deporting
Windrush generation migrants.
Critics described it as a “truly
puzzling” waste of money.
James Roberts, political director of
the TaxPayers’ Alliance, added:
“Splashing public money on a costly
day out, when surely a simple team
lunch could have sufficed, shows some
bureaucrats have truly lost their way.
The Home Office needs to crack down
on this nonsense.”
The Crystal Maze experience in
London is based on the cult Channel 4show. The website bills the 75-minute
experience as the “ultimate team
challenge” and a “properly interactive,
frenetic and very silly test of your
mental and physical abilities”.
In April last year it was revealed that
thousands of migrants from the Com-
monwealth who had been in the UK for
decades could have been targeted by
the Home Office for deportation.
The same month the department
admitted it had set up a new team to
deal with Windrush cases, amid
criticism that thousands of landing
cards recording arrivals in the UK had
been destroyed.
A Home Office spokesman said:
“There is a small budget for team build-
ing and professional development and
care is always taken to minimise costs,
spending taxpayers’ money carefully.”Dramatic rise in abuse of
MPs ‘puts democracy at risk’
By Camilla Tominey ASSOCIATE EDITORABUSE and threats are forcing MPs out
and putting democracy at risk, a senior
politician has warned.
Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Deputy
Speaker who chairs a parliamentary se-
curity panel, said MPs were telling him
they can no longer stand for re-election
as their family has to come first.
His comments came after the BBC
carried out a survey of MPs asking
about abuse. Out of a total of 650 MPs,
172 responded. Of those, 139 said either
they or their staff had faced abuse in
the past year and 108 said they had
been in contact with the police about
threats in the last 12 months.
David Lammy, the former Labour
minister, said one abuser told him:
“You’re not English, you have to bewhite to be English.” Lisa Cameron, an
SNP MP, said she received warnings
that “individuals were going to come
after my family”.
Sir Lindsay said: “The threat level is
beyond anything we’ve ever known
before. And the fact is that when MPs
turn round to me and say, ‘Lindsay, I’m
not going to stand again, I don’t feel
safe, I don’t need this, my family has
got to come first’, then we’re in danger
of losing democracy in this country.”
Lord Evans of Weardale, who chairs
the committee on standards in public
life, added: “We’ve got a serious prob-
lem with abuse – and it’s getting worse.”
Adrian Usher, the Met Police com-
mander who leads policing at the West-
minster, recognised a “dramatic rise”
in abuse, but was confident they had
the appropriate resources to respond.Plot for Queen
to fire Johnson
if he defies vote
of confidence
By Harry Yorke
POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT
REMAINERS are plotting to drag the
Queen into a political crisis by demand-
ing that she sack Boris Johnson if he
refuses to step down in the event he
loses a confidence vote in Parliament.
Dominic Grieve, the former attorney
general, was last night accused of be-
ing behind plans which would see the
monarch asked to remove the Prime
Minister should he refuse to bend to
the will of the Commons.
Insiders said the MPs plan to use a
parliamentary procedure known as a
Humble Address, which would entail
asking the Queen to write to Mr John-
son, dismissing him from office.
The extraordinary proposal has been
floated as a way of stopping Mr John-
son ignoring MPs should he lose a vote
of no confidence, which is expected to
be tabled when Parliament resumes af-
ter the summer recess.
It follows reports that Mr Johnson is
considering defying convention by re-
maining in No 10, with constitutional
experts confirming that he is under no
legal obligation to quit.
While Remainers hope MPs can
force a general election and block no-
deal by winning such a vote, it has been
suggested that Mr Johnson would sim-
ply delay a public poll until after Oct 31,
by which time the UK will have left the
European Union.
If Mr Johnson attempted to “bury
himself ” in Downing Street, one MP
said that some are confident the Queen
would have to intervene.
The MP added: “The Queen would
write him a letter saying he is dis-
missed. She would have to sack him. Of
course, she would.”
It came as Mr Grieve told the BBC:
“To argue that if you lose a vote of no
confidence you will simply sit it out
and barricade yourself in Downing
Street ... is simply breathtaking, stupid,
infantile, and it won’t work.”
A cross-party group of politicians
yesterday launched a legal action at-
tempting to stop Mr Johnson pursuing
a no-deal Brexit by suspending Parlia-
ment, also known as prorogation.
Although the Prime Minister has
said that he is against taking the radical
step – favoured by some hardline Tory
Brexiteers – the group hope to tie his
hands and make it impossible for him
to do so.
Glimmer of hope Leo Varadkar, the Irish premier, said he believed a no-deal Brexit could still be avoided as he visited
Hillsborough Castle, Northern Ireland. It came as the EU said UK demands to remove the Irish backstop were unacceptable.COLM LENAGHAN/ PACEMAKER48
The number of staff paid to attend the
Crystal Maze experience, which cost
the taxpayer a total of £2,639.РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS