Ministers delivered bleak Brexit prediction as top negotiator warns there’s ‘no chance’ of bespoke trade deal with EU
PM's chief Brexit official Oliver Robbins briefed Cabinet ahead of Chequers talks and painted a bleak picture, with source saying they came out thinking ‘we were even more screwed than we were before’
MINISTERS were delivered a bleak Brexit prediction as the UK’s top negotiator warned there is “no chance” of getting a bespoke trade deal with the EU.
The Prime Minister's chief Brexit official Oliver Robbins reportedly briefed the Cabinet ahead of this week’s crunch Chequers talks and painted a bleak picture of the situation.
A source told the they came out of the meeting thinking “we were even more screwed than we were before”.
Mr Robbins reportedly said secretaries of state have to be "realistic" about what they can achieve.
The senior ministers were given the warning ahead of crunch government talks at the PM's Chequers country pile on Friday.
There they will have to finally break the deadlock on what sort of arrangement Britain wants to negotiate with Brussels later this year.
They were told they may have to choose a Norway-style deal in which Britain stays in the EU-run single market or strike a free trade deal that does not favour Brit businesses, The Times said.
It comes as Downing Street is said to have produced a third model for handling customs after the UK leaves the EU.
There have been wrangles over the two alternatives already suggested, known as the ‘customs partnership’, and ‘max fac’.
Details of the new plan have not been set out, but its existence — confirmed by Number 10 – shows the government has now deemed both original options are not practically or politically deliverable.
It comes as the Conservative party threatens to tear itself apart again over Brexit, after Jacob Rees-Mogg threatened to bring down Mrs May.
Senior Tories lined up today to attack the eccentric backbencher, accusing him of "insolence" and risking plunging the party into an "ego-fest".
Mr Rees-Mogg, head of the influential European Research Group, has called on Theresa May to "stand firm" against attempts to keep us tied closely to the EU after Brexit.
But his sparked a furious backlash from ministers who accused Mr Rees-Mogg of trying to destabilise the Government.
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Alan Duncan, Boris Johnson's deputy, tweeted that Mr Rees-Mogg’s “insolence in lecturing and threatening [the] PM is just too much”.
Foreign Office minister Alistair Burt added: "Enough. Just tired of this endless threat and counter threat. Why don’t we want the best for the U.K. than for our own ideological cliques?"
And Tory MP Simon Hoare, an aide to Education Secretary Damian Hinds, said: "The hectoring nonsense / blackmail has to stop, the reality of parliamentary arithmetic dawn and the calamity of a Corbyn Government woken up to.
"Tories are common sense pragmatists NOT dogmatic vestal virgins."