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DPA
LONDON
DOZENS of eurosceptic lawmakers opposed to British Prime Minister Theresa May's"Chequers"plan for Brexit will vote against it in parliament, a leading rebel warned on Tuesday.
Steve Baker said he and other members of the European Research Group of pro-Brexit Conservatives will not accept the kind of"half in, half out"deal for leaving the European Union that May appears to be close to agreeing with EU leaders.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, the lawmaker was responding to reports that May could reach a deal to keep an open Irish border after Britain leaves the EU in March by keeping the current customs arrangements beyond a 21-month transitional period.
In Brussels, meanwhile, Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) warned that it could also oppose May in parliament if she accepts the EU's"untenable"backstop plan for the Irish border, which could involve checks on some goods transported to Northern Ireland from Britain.
"There cannot be barriers to trade in the UK internal market which would damage the economic well-being of Northern Ireland,"DUP leader Arlene Foster told reporters following talks with Michel Barnier, the EU's chief Brexit negotiator.
"And therefore we could not support any arrangement which would give rise to either customs or regulatory barriers within the UK internal market,"said Foster, whose 10 DUP members in the British parliament are key to May's minority government.
Baker said that he expected May's government to"whip this vote extremely hard"to persuade some 80 Conservative rebels to toe the line in a vote expected next month.
"But what I would say is that the whips would be doing incredibly well if they were to halve the numbers, and my estimate is that there are at least 40 colleagues who are not going to accept a half-in, half-out Chequers deal, or indeed a backstop that leaves us in the internal market and the customs union, come what may,"he told the Today programme.
Baker resigned from his post as a junior Brexit minister in July, along with former Brexit secretary David Davis and former foreign secretary Boris Johnson, to oppose May's proposals.
May said in June that her cabinet had agreed a compromise proposal for a temporary, last-resort"backstop"arrangement to maintain free movement of goods and people across the border after the transitional period.
She has insisted any backstop would only be a last resort that should end by December 2021.
But Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar and Irish republican party Sinn Fein - along with the DUP, one of the two largest parties in Northern Ireland - have said they would not accept a temporary backstop.
Foster suggested that other options should be explored, rather than just seeing a choice between the current proposals and a"no deal"Brexit.
"If there was a border down the Irish Sea, then Northern Ireland would not be able to benefit from any future trade deals that the UK government would pull together,"she said."I want to be part of global UK."
