Keir Starmer has urged Conservative MPs who want Britain to remain in the EU to vote with Labour on a series of crucial Brexit amendments that come before the House of Commons this week.

As the Commons enters a momentous week, several votes – including on the customs union and the role of parliament in approving the final deal, known as the meaningful vote – remain close. Opposition MPs need only a dozen or so Tories to join them to disrupt Theresa May’s Brexit plans.

Speaking on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show on Sunday, Starmer denied Labour had let the Tories off the hook by refusing to seek membership of the European Economic Union. “We have pushed the PM all the way on the really big issues. The two really important ones for this week are the customs union and the meaningful vote,” he said.

“And if – and I urge Tory MPs who care about this to vote for those amendments – if Tory MPs who care about those amendments vote with us, there is a real chance for parliament to change the course of the Brexit negotiations and bring some order where there is real chaos,” he said.

Labour’s hopes of striking another blow to May’s plans faded a little on Saturday night when the prominent Tory remainer Amber Rudd urged her party’s MPs to back the government in the votes, which are due to take place on Tuesday and Wednesday.

In a joint article with the Brexiter Iain Duncan Smith, the former home secretary warned that defeat could lead the government to fall.

“Jeremy Corbyn will do everything he can to stop us. That includes cynically trying to frustrate the Brexit process for his own political ends, as he will try to do next week when the Commons votes again on the EU [Withdrawal] Bill,” they wrote in the Sunday Telegraph.

They said that voting to overturn or water down a series of amendments inserted by the lords should be a “no brainer”. “It behoves us all to demonstrate discipline and unity of purpose in support of the prime minister. We cannot allow ourselves to become divided and risk losing the precious chance to go on implementing policies that transform lives.”

With the government dependent on the Democratic Unionist party for its majority, Tory whips are expected to increase the pressure on potential rebels to ensure they have the numbers when it comes to the divisions. They may be boosted by the support of a handful of pro-Brexit Labour MPs.

In further evidence of internal Tory party struggles, however, the Cabinet Office minister, David Lidington, defended the chancellor, Philip Hammond, following criticisms from Boris Johnson that the Treasury was “the heart of remain”.

“I have worked with Philip for quite a few years in government now. He’s somebody who has accepted the verdict of the British people in the referendum,” he told Marr.



The foreign secretary’s comments were recorded at a private dinner last week, where he also suggested that Donald Trump would do a better job of negotiating Brexit than May.

Quick Guide What Boris Johnson said in leaked recording of speech Show Deep divisions in the cabinet over Brexit have been exposed in a secret recording of a speech Boris Johnson gave to the Conservative Way Forward group. Here are his most contentious comments on ... Donald Trump “Imagine Trump doing Brexit. He’d go in bloody hard … There’d be all sorts of breakdowns, all sorts of chaos. Everyone would think he’d gone mad. But actually you might get somewhere. It’s a very, very good thought.” Meltdown over Brexit “You’ve got to face the fact there may now be a meltdown. OK? I don’t want anybody to panic during the meltdown. No panic. Pro bono publico, no bloody panic. It’s going to be all right in the end.” The Treasury “The inner struggle is very, very difficult. The Treasury, which is basically the heart of remain, has seized the risk — what they don’t want is friction at the borders. They don’t want any disruption. So they’re sacrificing all the medium and long-term gains amid fear of short-term disruption. Do you see what I’m saying? “And that fear of short-term disruption has become so huge in people’s minds that they’re turning them all wet. Project Fear is really working on them. They’re terrified of this nonsense. It’s all mumbo jumbo.” EU’s orbit “The risk is that it will not be the [Brexit] we want and the risk is that we will end up in a sort of ante-room of the EU, with an orbit around the EU, in a customs union and to a large extent in the single market. So not really having full freedom on our trade policy, our tariffs schedules, and not having freedom with our regulatory framework either, in the lunar pull of the EU. “What they are trying to do is do a Brexit that does as little change as possible and that keeps us basically in the same orbital pull … and that would be the worst of both worlds.” Photograph: Toby Melville/X90004

Lidington, who is often said to effectively be the deputy prime minister, defended May’s handling of the negotiationsand confirmed that the Brexit white paper would be released in July.

May, who is in Quebec for the G7 summit, criticised peers for passing the amendments and accused them of going far beyond their role as a revising chamber. “Let’s remember what the withdrawal bill is for. It’s about delivering a statute book that is ready for Brexit day,” she said. “Of course, the Lords has a revising role to play, but some of the amendments that were passed and the comments that were made went far beyond that.

“You had peers talking about stopping Brexit or trying to tie the government’s hands in the negotiations. This government is delivering on the decision made by the country in the referendum to leave the EU, and we will not accept anything that prevents us from taking back control of our money, laws and borders.”

