May faces backlash from hardliners despite Brexit deal

LONDON

British Prime Minister Theresa May scored a key success in clinching a Brexit deal with Brussels but faced an immediate backlash from hardliners at home for making compromises.

“It’s not Brexit,” Nigel Farage, the former leader of the UK Independence Party and a major driving force behind last year’s Brexit referendum, said.

“An agreement in Brussels is good news for Mrs May as we can now move on to the next stage of humiliation.”

Boxed in by rival pro-Brexit and pro-EU factions within her Conservative party, May has been at risk of being toppled since a June general election in which she lost her majority.

The Sun early this week even reported a plot to replace May with Brexit Secretary Davis David before Christmas.

While that threat may have receded, it has not gone away and May faces an uphill struggle getting parliamentary support for the deal.

SCATHING REACTION

Campaign group Leave.EU issued a scathing reaction to the deal, saying: “Our lily-livered politicians have sold the country down the river”.

It called the agreement a capitulation.

Ministers, however, lined up to praise May, with her deputy Damian Green saying it was a big successful moment.

Environment Secretary Michael Gove, a top Brexit campaigner who ran against May in a party leadership contest last year, said the preliminary agreement was a significant personal, political achievement.

Conservative MP Anna Soubry, a leading pro-EU advocate, gave the deal a “warm welcome” and hoped it would heal the “dreadful Brexit divide”.

DEAL

May was on the brink of sealing a deal in Brussels on Monday but the bid was scuppered by Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party, whose 10 MPs prop up the government on key votes in parliament.

DUP leader Arlene Foster offered only grudging support to May, saying aspects of the agreement could require more examination. (AFP)

The reactions in the politically-influential right-wing press were also less than glowing.

Daily Mail columnist Quentin Letts wrote: “The more the Eurocrats praise Mrs May’s ‘determination’, the more uneasy we should feel.”

The Sun’s political editor Tom Newton Dunn said the deal was “a coup for May” but “this was supposed to be the easy bit and it took nine long and painful months.”

HOW LONG BEFORE IT’S TORN APART?

There were also warnings from the opposition.

Keir Starmer, chief Brexit spokesman for the Labour party, welcomed the deal but cautioned that the “political price of compromise” was not yet known.

The pro-EU Liberal Democrats, who have called for a second referendum on EU membership, wrote: “How long before it’s torn apart by her own MPs?

“It should be the British people, not Tory Brexiters and DUP, who get to decide whether this deal is good enough.”

After a negotiation that has focused on issues in Northern Ireland, May faces further challenges in other devolved nations — Scotland and Wales — where support for the EU is far stronger than in England.

Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, who wants independence for Scotland from the rest of Britain, warned that the “devil is in the detail and things now get really tough.”

“If Brexit is happening (wish it wasn’t) staying in single market & customs union is only sensible option,” she said on Twitter, adding that any “special arrangements” for Northern Ireland should also be available to Scotland.