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Courtesy of the Times.
Theresa May will invite Tory opponents into Downing Street for drinks on Monday and Wednesday as she faces an unprecedented digital grassroots campaign cementing opposition to her Brexit deal among MPs. The prime minister will meet members of the European Research Group and other opponents to discuss her deal, which is due to be put to the Commons the following week. She held a pre-Christmas meeting with Jacob Rees-Mogg, the European Research Group leader, and Bernard Jenkin, among ten Tory MPs invited to discuss the Tory party’s future as part of Mrs May's “masochism strategy”.
However, the grassroots campaign, set up after the Chequers cabinet meeting last summer, is designed to force MPs to stick to their pledges to vote down Mrs May’s deal. Before Christmas, No 10 said it believed that many of the more than 100 MPs who had expressed concerns would come round to support Mrs May after the holidays. However, the StandUp4Brexit campaign website lists 59 MPs who have signed pledges, many of them filming personalised videos, making clear that they will never vote for the withdrawal agreement or the future relationship document. The campaign’s Twitter account has 15,300 followers. Jacob Rees-Mogg, Boris Johnson, Priti Patel, Andrea Jenkyns, and several other Tory MPs all signed the pledge on the website that “Mrs May’s withdrawal agreement is not Brexit”. Many uploaded videos outlining their opposition to Mrs May’s approach first set out after the Chequers meeting in July. The StandUp4Brexit campaign was set up by Rebecca Ryan, a Tory activist who runs a digital consultancy. “There were a large number of MPs who were not happy with Chequers,” she told The Times. “Conservatives are usually well behaved and loyalty is valued — they don’t often put their head above the parapet. So I decided to take the risk and see what happens. I thought it might make activists involved unpopular with Mrs May’s team, but we wanted to send a message. We got 15,000 followers in five months.”
Ms Ryan, 41, from Kent, said that the pledges on her site could be used to hold MPs who changed their mind to account. The videos were not controlled by MPs and could be used by Brexit-supporting opponents in future. They could also be useful when dealing with the whips if they changed their mind. “The MPs that sign up, and the videos, allow MPs to hold themselves to account. It allows them to go to their whips, and the party machine, and say they’ve pledged online so they can’t back down. Not everyone used videos, but the videos get far, far more traction,” Ms Ryan said.
Sources close to the campaign said that they expected “very few” of the existing 59 Tory MPs to change their mind. One prominent member of Standup4Brexit said that the video commitments would be difficult to renege on because the videos and pledge cards would live on online for ever.
Another prominent Brexiteer suggested that MPs could justify anything to themselves when offered promotion and rewards by the party machine, and thought that not all would hold firm to their vow.
Mrs May spoke to Jean-Claude Juncker yesterday as part of an effort to get her deal through parliament. The prime minister and president of the European Commission had “friendly” talks and agreed to stay in touch, a commission spokeswoman said.
Mrs May needs the EU to issue more helpful statements before the so-called meaningful vote on the deal, on either January 15 or 16, making clear that the backstop, the insurance policy for the border in Ireland, will not be indefinite. Sammy Wilson, Brexit spokesman for the DUP, which the Tories rely on for key votes in parliament, has said his party cannot support the Brexit deal. Northern Ireland’s farmers and businesses should be “relaxed” over Britain leaving the EU with no deal, he said.
