Star Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg appears to have finally lost patience with Prime Minister Theresa May, branding her a “Remainer who has remained a Remainer” after the publication of her ultra-soft Brexit white paper.
Mrs May’s proposals, apparently composed in Downing Street by Soviet-sympathising bureaucrat Olly Robbins behind the the back of the Brexit Department, include collecting customs duties on the EU’s behalf, adhering to a so-called “common rulebook” effectively written and adjudicated by the EU, and agreeing to match or exceed EU rules governing environmental regulations, social policy, state aid, and more.
She had previously insisted taking back control of Britain’s borders, laws, and trade policy while ending the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice in the United Kingdom were “red lines” in a speech at Mansion House.
She claims her white paper proposals do achieve these aims — but Rees-Mogg and many other Brexit supporters are unconvinced, including a number of government minister and parliamentary private secretaries who have resigned over the proposals, appear unconvinced.
“The common rulebook is misnamed,” the Somerset MP wrote in the Express.
“It is not common, it is the EU rulebook which we will have to follow or face penalties.
“As for borders and money the statements in the paper are vague and the proposed arrangements for European immigration sufficiently broad to allow for Free Movement to continue,” he added.
The Prime Minister, complained Rees-Mogg, “wants to bind the nation into the failing economic model of the EU rather than open it to the growth in the rest of the world. Ninety per cent of future economic growth is expected to come from outside the EU.”
He described the white paper as “timorous, fearing that Brussels will not accept a real Brexit and, therefore, lacking the courage to ask for it,” and said Brexiteers’ trust in Mrs May had been broken.
“It would have been more straightforward to admit that no real Brexit was the intention all along rather than trying to gull Brexiteers,” he said.
“Perhaps we ought to have realised earlier on that a Remainer would stick with Remain.”
Rees-Mogg repeated this stunning rebuke in an interview on the Sunday Politics programme which aired after May appeared on the Andrew Marr Show to defend her Brexit plans on Sunday morning.
“In a negotiation, two sides say what they want, you don’t just as one side say, ‘Oh well, the EU’s said this, we must follow it’… The Government, unfortunately, believes that Brexit is not a good thing in itself; it seems to think it has to be tempered with non-Brexit… the Prime Minister said people voted with their hearts, and she was doing something with her head,” he explained.
“In my view, and in the view of most Brexiteers, head and heart come together. Brexit is enormously positive; a huge opportunity for the country — and I’m afraid the Prime Minister doesn’t see that, and it’s why I think she is a Remainer who has remained a Remainer.”