Portrait of the Week – 14 June 2018

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Negotiations over Brexit acquired an even stronger admixture of chaos and old night. Phillip Lee resigned as a little-known justice minister over Brexit, saying: ‘The 2016 referendum is detrimental to the people we are elected to serve.’ The government managed to reject in the Commons by 324 to 298 a Lords amendment on giving Parliament a ‘meaningful vote’ on a Brexit deal, after Theresa May, the Prime Minister, met rebels and promised that parts of an amendment by Dominic Grieve would be accepted. The white paper on Brexit will not now be published before the European Council summit later this month; warring cabinet ministers were invited to Chequers to discuss it. David Davis decided not to resign as Brexit Secretary after it was agreed that a backstop solution to the Irish border quandary (by retaining ties to the EU customs union) ‘will only be in place until the future customs arrangement can be introduced’, which the government ‘expects’ to be the end of December 2021.