Home secretary says ‘last thing we want is an election, the people will never forgive us’

Sajid Javid has said “the last thing we want is a general election”, emphasising that the government is still hoping to secure a time limit or unilateral exit mechanism for the Irish border backstop.

The home secretary dismissed newspaper reports that Downing Street strategists were considering holding a snap general election on 6 June, if Theresa May cannot get her Brexit deal through parliament before the 29 March deadline.

“The last thing we want is a general election, the people will never forgive us for it,” Javid told the BBC’s The Andrew Marr Show. “They want politicians to get on with the job. They have been given a very clear mandate, now it’s our job to get on with it.”

There are signs that the Conservatives have started to gear up for a possible snap election, with the party’s chief executive, Sir Mick Davis, placing the Tories on a “war footing” last week and increased fundraising activities under the cover of the local elections in May.

A poll by Opinium for the Observer showed the Conservatives seven points ahead of Labour on 41%, but few people believe the party would risk going to the country under May’s leadership after the disaster of 2017, when its overall majority was lost.

“I know that Conservative party headquarters is planning on only one set of elections, which is the local government elections. The last thing this country wants is an election; they want parliament to deliver Brexit in an orderly way,” Javid said.

The home secretary indicated that May would shortly be returning to Brussels for further negotiations – without giving a date – and said she would be working closely with two senior ministers in those talks.

Geoffrey Cox, the attorney general and the government’s chief law officer, will be leading a fresh push to see if “there can be a hard time limit on any backstop or our own exit mechanism”, Javid said.

The Brexit secretary, Steve Barclay, will lead efforts to assess whether alternative technological arrangements can be put in place to eliminate the Irish backstop, so customs checks can take place away from the physical border.

Last week, MPs voted in favour of an amendment in the name of Sir Graham Brady, a senior Conservative, to examine the possibility of alternative arrangements, but it is unclear that the necessary technology exists.

Brexiters in May’s party remain concerned that the prime minister will fail to secure a legally binding mechanism to effectively eliminate the unpopular backstop in her discussions with an already hostile European Union.

Steve Baker, the vice-chairman of the hard Brexit European Research Group, said there was “trouble ahead” if May was prepared to accept only an attachment to the withdrawal agreement, or codicil.

“Leave-backing MPs voted to support alternative arrangements in NI but with grave misgivings about the whole agreement,” Baker tweeted on Sunday morning, accusing May of co-opting “us into accepting everything but the backstop and, on the backstop, accepting a codicil”.

Downing Street said that was not the case, adding that May wanted to reopen the withdrawal agreement in emergency negotiations, even though the EU has repeatedly said that will not be allowed.

Javid said he believed there was no mileage in May trying to compromise with Labour and its leader, Jeremy Corbyn on a deal that would keep the UK in a customs union with the EU after Brexit.

He said he did not think such a deal would get a majority in the Commons, partly because “the other half of Labour say they want a second referendum” but also because “you’d lose votes on the Conservative side; it’s a complete non-starter”.

The home secretary was also pressed on whether he believed the UK would be as safe in a no-deal scenario. The EU has said Britain would no longer be part of the European arrest warrant system, which allows suspects to be extradited back to the UK.

Javid said there would be “a change in capability” if there was no deal because there were “certain capabilities that we rely on for security, such as databases, arrest warrants, others. That of course will change. I’m not pretending that you can have a like-for-like capability.”

“We will still be a very safe country,” Javid said. “Most of these capabilities began in 2015. We were a safe country then, and we’d be a very safe country in a no-deal scenario.”