Theresa May faces another week of Tory infighting over Brexit as Cabinet splits over customs arrangements show no sign of healing.
With key Brexiteer ministers openly challenging the Prime Ministers preferred option for post EU withdrawal trade arrangements, Tory voices have suggested extending the present relationship with Brussels in order to allow time for a compromise solution to be hammered-out.
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As the Government remained divided, a new coalition of prominent cross-party figures has come together to push the case for a much softer Brexit.
Former foreign secretary David Miliband makes his most high profile intervention in politics since quitting the Commons after being beaten to the Labour leadership as he appears on the same platform as Liberal Democrat ex-deputy prime minister Sir Nick Clegg, and Tory former Cabinet minister Nicky Morgan on Monday.
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Ahead of a new meeting of the inner war Cabinet on Brexit, ministers were more openly at odds than ever with Environment Secretary Michael Gove joining Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson in publicly criticising Mrs Mays preferred option of a customs partnership with the EU that would see the UK collect tariffs for Brussels.
The alternative model known as maximum facilitation, or Max Fac, would rely on new technology and trusted trader schemes.
With the top team divided, the Prime Ministers former effective deputy Damian Green suggested Britain may have to stay in the current customs union longer than planned by extending the transition period in order to find a way forward – an idea arch Brexiteers have continually rejected.
Mr Green, who was fired in December after a Cabinet Office inquiry found he had breached the ministerial code, told BBC Radio Fours The Westminster Hour: This is not the time for members of the Cabinet or anyone else inside the Conservative Party to indulge in ideology.
I think the most likely endpoint will be some of whats called the maximum facilitation, some variant of that.
I, personally, am not yet convinced that you could have that in place by the end of 2020, at the end of the implementation period, and, therefore, you might need to bolt-on to that another period, a sort of transition period into that, so that we know not only that it works, but that it works from day one.
Thats really important, and I think thats more important than any ideological posturing that seems to be going on over this.
Meanwhile, the head of the UKs largest business lobby group warned there was growing frustration in the business community over the impasse in government, and said a decision needed to be made urgently.
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Carolyn Fairbairn, the director-general of the CBI, told the Daily Telegraph: The CBIs view… is that there is a non-ideological and practical solution that is staring us in the face: that we stay in a customs union with the EU unless and until there is an alternative that is workable.
She added: If we dont break the impasse on this customs decision, everybody will be affected – manufacturers, services companies, retailers. An awful lot hangs on this now. We need decisions within days and weeks.
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