THE dark bags under her eyes said it all.
Still reeling from her second cabinet resignation in less than 24 hours, Theresa May entered the Commons to defend her Brexit plans to a short burst of cheers from the Tory benches.
But it wasn’t long before Conservative in-fighting broke out into the open, leaving the Prime Minister forced to deny Friday’s Chequers agreement was a "betrayal".
Peter Bone – an long-time opponent of the EU – faced shouts of "shame" and "nonsense" from his own party as he revealed local activists had refused to campaign over the weekend because they were so disillusioned.
He was heckled as he added: "They said they were betrayed and they asked, 'Why do we go out each and every Saturday to support the Conservative Party and get MPs elected?'
"For the first time in over 10 years, that group refused to go out and campaign.”
Andrea Jenkyns, another prominent Tory Eurosceptic, insisted she had received hundreds of emails from furious activists.
“Within 48 hours of the Prime Minister’s statement on Friday, I received over 300 emails—disheartened, dismayed and telling me that democracy is dead,” she said.
Elsewhere, former Tory minister Sir Edward Leigh raised fears Mrs May’s Brexit compromise would “severely constrain our ability to make our business more competitive and to undertake free trade deals”.
And another former minister, John Redwood, asked the PM to "clear away the ambiguity or contradictions in the Chequers statement” which implied “we might accept [EU] laws and we might have their migration policy".
Mrs May was left insisting her negotiating position, apparently agreed by her Cabinet on Friday, was not a betrayal of 2016’s referendum result.
She told MPs: “We will end free movement, we will end the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice, we will stop sending vast sums of money to the European Union every year, we will come out of the Common Agricultural Policy, we will come out of the Common Fisheries Policy.
"I believe that is what people voted for when they voted to leave and we will deliver in faith to the British people."
Earlier, from the opposition benches, an ashen-faced Mrs May was left facing down something just as deadly as party in-fighting: ridicule.
There were howls of laughter as she paid tribute to former Brexit and foreign secretaries David Davis and Boris Johnson.
She insisted she wanted to recognise the “passion” Mr Johnson demonstrated “in promoting a global Britain to the world as we leave the European Union”.
“What we are proposing is challenging for the EU,” she later added, to yet more guffawing. “It requires them to think again, to look beyond the positions they have taken so far, and agree a new and fair balance of rights and obligations.”
The PM tried to join in with the mirth when Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn rose to stick the boot in. Her smile was pained.
“Two years on from the referendum, 16 months on from Article 50 being triggered, it’s only this weekend that the Cabinet managed to agree a negotiating position among itself,” Mr Corbyn thundered. “And that illusion lasted 48 hours.”
He added: “On Friday the Prime Minister was so proud of her Brexit deal that she wrote to her MPs to declare that collective Cabinet responsibility ‘is now fully restored’, while the Environment Secretary [Michael Gove] added his own words, saying that ‘one of the things about this compromise is that it unites the Cabinet’.”
On the SNP benches, Westminster leader Ian Blackford congratulated Mr Davis “on the whole four hours that he spent negotiating in Brussels”.
But he reserved his harshest criticism for Mr Johnson. The departing Foreign Secretary should not have been allowed to resign, he insisted – "he should have been sacked for being a national embarrassment.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel