It only took a few lines of Theresa May’s statement to the House of Commons on her Brexit deal before MPs started making dissenting noises all around her. The Prime Minister started by listing the ways in which the deal ‘takes back control’ for the British people, telling MPs that this included control of Britain’s borders, ending the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice, an end to ‘vast annual payments we send to Brussels’, protecting jobs through a new Free Trade Area, protecting the country’s security and maintaining ‘the integrity of our United Kingdom, meeting our commitments in Northern Ireland and delivering for the whole UK family, including our Overseas Territories’. The head-shaking and disagreeing started from that first assertion about border control, and continued throughout the list. And it came from the benches behind the Prime Minister, as well as from opposition MPs.
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The line in her statement that will attract the most opposition from her own party over the next few weeks followed shortly afterwards: the Prime Minister insisted that the backstop ‘is an insurance policy that no-one wants to use’.
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