Immediately after the government’s crushing defeat on Tuesday night, a slew of Cabinet Ministers thought that it was inevitable that Theresa May would have to make some kind of concession on the customs union to get a deal through parliament. But, as I say in The Sun this morning, this option has run into two obstacles.
First, Corbyn and McDonnell aren’t playing ball. Without their blessing, there is no way you could get 116 Labour MPs to vote with a Tory PM.
Secondly, it has become clear that agreeing to a customs union would not only split the Tory party, lead to at least one Cabinet resignation, but would also—according to one senior Cabinet Minister—lose the support of 40 MPs who voted for the deal on Tuesday night. May herself is not keen on the idea either; she thinks that having an independent trade policy is one of the main economic benefits of Brexit.
For these reasons, she emphasising to Tory MPs that she doesn’t want to give way on the customs union.
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