BREXIT

TIME is running out for Theresa May to save her Chequers plan.

The Cabinet have given the Prime Minister one last chance to sell her proposals to EU leaders at a summit next week.

Ministers have now warned, however, they will demand a Plan B if there is a repeat of the humiliating rejection she faced in Salzburg last month.

European Union negotiators have been talking up the chances of reaching an agreement at the meeting on issues such as the Irish border. But, largely, they are still refusing to accept the proposals set out in Mrs May’s Chequers plan on how a trade deal could work.

The European Commission is expected to offer the UK a “supercharged” free trade deal but will reject about 60 to 70 per cent of the Prime Minister’s blueprint, including the demand for frictionless trade.

Despite the anticipated setback, ministers are planning to hold off on moves to force Mrs May into ditching her Chequers plan until after next week’s meeting in Brussels.

Hopes of a breakthrough in Brexit talks have continued to rise as Ireland said the chances of a deal were good.

Dublin’s deputy prime minister Simon Coveney said: “The withdrawal treaty is already about 90 per cent agreed in terms of text – the issues that have not been signed off yet relate predominately to Ireland and the two negotiating teams need to lock themselves in a room.”

The more optimistic remarks came after both European Commission president Jean Claude Juncker and his counterpart at the European Council, Donald Tusk, delivered an unusually upbeat message.

YET, Theresa May remains adamant that it is either her Brexit plan or nothing. Brexiteers, most notably Boris Johnson, takes issue with Mrs May’s assertion and set out an alternative approach that would keep the promises previously made to leave the EU in a manner that fulfils the referendum mandate to return control to the UK.

Mr Johnson resigned from the Cabinet in July in protest at the policy thrashed out at Chequers, so his antipathy to that plan is well known. But, in the meantime, it has become clear that not only does he and many Conservative (and Opposition) MPs oppose Chequers, but so does the EU. Mrs May’s humiliation at Salzburg should have convinced the Prime Minister that her way is a dead end. Instead, she has decided to plough ahead with a set of proposals hardly anyone thinks can work.

The alternative put forward by Mr Johnson – as it was by the European Research Group of Conservative MPs recently – is for Britain to seek a Canada-style trade deal when talks on the future relationship begin after Brexit.

Mrs May insists that this would not solve the problem of the Irish border, in that the so-called “backstop” to which she has agreed would mean Northern Ireland staying – unlike the rest of the UK – in a customs union with the EU, thus breaking the Union.

Mr Johnson’s answer to this conundrum is for Mrs May to withdraw that promise. As he appreciates, that would mean a different type of withdrawal agreement would have to be negotiated and the Irish border question settled as part of future economic arrangements. It would, indeed, be a “difficult step” for Mrs May, who made the ill-advised pledge last December in order to move on to the next stage of the talks, only to find that it is proving an insuperable stumbling block to an acceptable agreement.

It may be a difficult step, but it is one she must be ready to make if the impasse is to be broken. We are now just days away from what is supposed to be the summit to settle the withdrawal agreement and only six months away from the Brexit date itself. We need a Plan B, and Mr Johnson has offered one. Not only Mrs May, but the Cabinet, too, need to consider that with time running out fast, accelerating towards the cliff edge is no longer a realistic option.

. See also Scotland’s EU Continuity Bill now being tested in Supreme Court