Chair of the Health Select Committee Wollaston insisted that her warning was not an attempt to bring down the government. Rather, the MP stated, it was giving May room to maneuver against Brexiteers in her party.<\/p>\n
Wollaston\u2019s comments come only days after 62 Tory Brexiteers signed a letter to the Prime Minister with what they called their “suggestions”<\/em> for leaving the bloc. Their ideas included hard Brexit pipedreams of leaving the single market and pursuing an independent trade policy outside the customs union.<\/p>\n Read more<\/p>\n The MP suggested that many members of the Conservative party shared her view that a customs arrangement of some type would be better for all. \u201cIt\u2019s not about trying to force Theresa May to resign, of course I don\u2019t want to see that, but in some ways I do think it may help her,\u201d<\/em> Wollaston said on the BBC\u2019s Newsnight program.<\/p>\n \u201cShe will then be able to turn around to the 62 who were sort of threatening to force her into a leadership contest. It will enable her to explain the reality. The simple reality is this \u2013 that there isn\u2019t a parliamentary majority for a hard Brexit and it allows her to go back to them [and] say \u2018Love to help, I\u2019ve done my best.\u2019\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n When Wollaston was asked what the majority in Parliament would be for a customs deal if there was a free vote, she said: \u201cHuge, because we know there are very many ministers and many many PPS’s and other people who are currently not able to sign amendments who would very much like to see us come to \u2018a customs arrangement\u2019 of some sort. So I think this will help her.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Read more<\/p>\n Wollaston said she and her fellow pro-European colleagues weren\u2019t trying to start a coup. The Conservative said they were just giving Theresa May more room to move.<\/p>\n On Monday, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn committed the opposition to a customs union with continued tariff-free trade with the EU. The Labour party has taken more than a year to outline its position on Brexit and explain how it would proceed with the split, which will see Britain become the first nation to leave the 28-member-state bloc.<\/p>\n The Labour leader\u2019s pledge to keep Britain in the customs union post-Brexit would mean the nation could not sign its own trade deals with non-EU countries after Brexit. This would keep the country tied to certain rules and regulations set in Brussels.<\/p>\n In a fine example of the strange political bedfellows Brexit has generated, former Tory Chancellor George Osborne endorsed Corbyn\u2019s speech while attacking his own party\u2019s position. In his editorial for the Evening Standard, Osborne highlighted Tory hypocrisy and the party\u2019s weak response to the opposition leader\u2019s newly-unveiled stance on Brexit.<\/p>\n May is expected to further set out her position on trade agreements with the EU this Friday. She will present a speech, another in the latest in a series of \u2018Road to Brexit\u2019 addresses that seek to outline the government\u2019s direction for the EU negotiations and a post-Brexit UK.<\/p>\n Like this story? Share it with a friend!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Via RT<\/a>. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tory MP Sarah Wollaston warned Prime Minister Theresa May that a \u201chuge\u201d majority will back a post-Brexit customs union. Her comments align with Labour, after Jeremy Corbyn endorsed the policy yesterday. Chair of the Health Select Committee Wollaston insisted that her warning was not an attempt to bring down the government. Rather, the MP stated, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":349739,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-350125","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=350125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350125\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/349739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=350125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=350125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=350125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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