The cabinet’s Brexit sub-committee met on Wednesday after Eurosceptic Conservative backbenchers called on the prime minister to abandon one of her two customs proposals.
Reports after the meeting suggested that Ms May’s new home secretary, Sajid Javid, and defence secretary Gavin Williamson joined Brexiteer ministers to oppose the proposed “customs partnership”, which would see Britain collect tariffs on behalf of the EU. Ministers opposed to a hard Brexit, including chancellor Philip Hammond and business secretary Greg Clark, spoke in favour of it.
The European Research Group (ERG) of 60 MPs led by Jacob Rees-Mogg dismissed the customs partnership as unworkable and urged the government to focus exclusively on a second option of a customs arrangement known as Maximum Facilitation or MaxFac, which would use technological and administrative measures to make customs controls less intrusive.
Mr Rees-Mogg denied that the group was threatening to move against the prime minister unless she took the customs partnership off the table.
“There is no question of there being an ultimatum. This is a paper that has been produced on a specific aspect of policy that would not work, that would not effectively take us out of the European Union. It would leave us de facto in both the customs union and the single market,” he told the BBC
Housing minister Dominic Raab, who campaigned for Brexit, said those opposed to the customs partnership option appeared to be winning the argument. [...]
Third option
At prime minister’s questions in the House of Commons on Wednesday, Ms May said there were “a number of ways” to deliver frictionless trade and avoid a hard Border in Ireland, fuelling speculation that the government is looking at a third option in an effort to unite the cabinet. Asked about the prime minister’s remarks, her spokesman said the government’s ideas on the customs relationship were evolving. [...]
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