A British cabinet minister has urged an alliance of Conservative hard-Brexiters and the DUP, who have warned they will join forces to vote down Theresa May’s withdrawal plans, to “think about the alternatives”.
As the prime minister struggled to keep her Brexit plans on track, the education secretary, Damian Hinds, said there would be “trade-offs” in any deal and the final agreement would not give all sides everything they wanted.
“It is not necessarily going to be something everybody is going to think is absolutely perfectly what they want,” he told BBC One’s Andrew Marr Show. “But that’s the nature of these things. There are some trade-offs.”
Ms May’s hopes of getting the cabinet to sign off her Brexit deal proposals at a crunch meeting this week appeared to be hanging in the balance amid warnings that even if ministers are “bounced” into giving it their backing at cabinet, MPs could still block it.
She also faces a growing rebellion from the remainer wing of her party with rumours that four more pro-Europe ministers are on the brink of resigning after the departure of transport minister Jo Johnson, who quit on Friday calling for a second referendum.