Tussle In Brussels: Why Theresa May Is Facing One Of Her Toughest Brexit Battles

Theresa May heads to Brussels for crunch meetings with senior EU figures to break the Brexit impasse on Thursday, in a trip which even Downing Street admits “will not be easy”.

Her mission: find a way to legally guarantee that Britain cannot be trapped in the Irish border ‘backstop’, a prospect which has turned Tory Brexiteers and the DUP vehemently against her deal.

The prime minister chose her path by deciding she could not risk splitting the Conservative party in two by backing a softer Brexit, which could eliminate the need for the soft border insurance policy and win over Labour.

Downing Street has since told the EU that MPs sent an “unequivocal message” that the backstop must change by voting down the Brexit deal with a 230-vote majority.

May has so far proposed three options: time-limiting the backstop, giving the UK a unilateral exit mechanism, or replacing the backstop with “alternative arrangements”.

The scale of her task was underlined on Wednesday by a brutal day of EU press statements, which included European Council president Donald Tusk saying Brexiteers who campaigned to leave the EU with no plan to deliver it should go “straight to hell”.

But is it quite as bad as it seems for the PM?

Time-limit

One proposal involves putting a “sunset clause”, or time limit, on the backstop so that it would end on a certain date.

This is one area in which EU unity was briefly tested, with Polish foreign minister Jacek Czaputowicz suggesting a potential five-year limit – to the delight of Brexiteers. Ex-Tory minister John Whittingdale even cited his comments in a TV news interview but admitted he could not pronounce the minister’s name.