May pleads with EU leaders not to dismiss her Brexit plan

Theresa May is begging EU leaders to give her strategy a chance as she prepares to present a softer form of Brexit to her anti-EU cabinet members.

The prime minister has suggested she will shift her negotiating position to align the UK closely with the EU on customs and regulations, the Financial Times reported. The move would cross or blur some of May’s so-called red lines.

May, who met Dutch leader Mark Rutte on 3 July, is warning her EU counterparts she will be dangerously exposed if she pushes her white paper through cabinet only for the EU to reject it. May meets Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, on 5 July.

“She wants to ensure it is not shot down straight away,” an EU diplomat told the FT. Her allies told the paper May was asking EU leaders to “engage with” the white paper.

Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, has asked May to come up with workable plans. He has warned that the UK cannot choose elements of the single market while avoiding the responsibilities that come with being a member.

Some cabinet members could resign over the prime minister’s proposal that the UK will collect tariffs for the EU at its borders – an idea anti-EU ministers believed had been dumped. May is holding a cabinet meeting at the prime minister’s country retreat, Chequers, on 6 July.

Chancellor Philip Hammond and business secretary Greg Clark are being lined by May to warn their colleagues at the meeting about the dangers of pushing for a hard Brexit, the Times reported, with the PM increasingly believed to be preparing to push her colleagues to accept a Brexit deal where Britain keeps existing rules for goods, with some limited curbs to migration and some reduction to EU access for service companies.

Friday’s meeting will examine four options, the Times was told: membership of the EEA; the Canadian-style Ceta trade agreement; no deal; and May's preferred fourth way that is apparently a "lot like Switzerland” but could face outright rejection by the EU.