Theresa May is being urged to give her MPs free rein to vote for a second referendum, with a new group of ministers poised to back another public ballot on Brexit.

Cabinet ministers are making fresh pleas for a new approach after the prime minister’s bleakest week in office, which has left her authority seriously damaged and led some Tory MPs to fear it will become impossible for her to govern.

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Senior figures in the government are convinced that with no sign of the parliamentary stalemate being resolved, Tory MPs must be allowed a free vote in a series of ballots over different options – allowing ministers and backbenchers to support a second referendum as a way out.

Some ministers are planning to take matters into their own hands and back another public vote should the prime minister’s beleaguered Brexit deal be rejected. “Once the deal has been voted down, there will be no clear government position and we will be freer,” said one.

May will meet her cabinet on Tuesday, with ministers preparing to set out wildly different paths ahead. It will include demands for a major step-up in planning for a no-deal Brexit.



The idea of handing parliament a non-binding vote over the different Brexit options – including a no-deal exit, a soft Brexit and a second vote – was rejected by the prime minister in a conference call with her cabinet last week. However, several ministers still see this as the only way to break the gridlock, but believe it will only work if Tory MPs are allowed to vote with their consciences.

A free vote may also defuse tensions within the Tory party that have reached fever pitch and left some wanting hardline Brexit MPs to split off and form a new party.

There is significant opposition to the idea. One cabinet minister warned such a series of votes would “end up being farcical” and hand Labour the chance to cause chaos. Another minister wants to heap pressure on the EU by holding a vote on a version of May’s deal that excludes the so-called “Irish backstop”, which Northern Irish DUP MPs and swaths of Tories find unacceptable.

“This has to now be about maximum imagination,” one minister said. “I do think it is about doing something different, rather than just going back, cap in hand, to the EU. There is no point offering the EU something that is rejected by parliament.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Tony Blair delivers a speech on Brexit. Photograph: Xinhua/Barcroft Images

But May is still fighting a furious last-ditch battle to secure legal assurances over her deal that would be required to win over the DUP and Tory MPs. EU ambassadors will be called into No 10 this week, while Jonathan Jones, the government’s most senior legal officer, will fly out to Brussels for talks with the European commission’s legal team. The prime minister will face a febrile House of Commons on Monday.

Some Tories, who had privately backed changing course to a softer, Norway-style Brexit, said they no longer believed such a compromise could work and that throwing the issue back to the public may be the only way through. Tory MPs Phillip Lee, Jo Johnson, Guto Bebb and Sam Gyimah have already quit as ministers in order to endorse what campaigners call a “people’s vote” on Brexit.

With talk of a second referendum growing, May again reiterated her opposition to another vote last night and said parliament had “a democratic duty to deliver what the British people voted for”. She even described Tony Blair’s recent appearance in Brussels to support a second vote as “an insult to the office he once held and the people he once served”.

“I have never lost sight of my duty and that is to deliver on the referendum result and to do so in a way that protects British jobs, keeps us safe and protects our precious union,” she said. “However, there are too many people who want to subvert the process for their own political interests – rather than acting in the national interest.

“For Tony Blair to go to Brussels and seek to undermine our negotiations by advocating for a second referendum is an insult to the office he once held and the people he once served. We cannot, as he would, abdicate responsibility for this decision.”

Downing Street is already expecting both Labour and hardline Tory Brexiters to engineer ways to inflict further damage on the prime minister before parliament breaks up for Christmas. Labour is said to be considering a motion of no confidence in the government, although several less explosive measures are being examined to heap further humiliation on the government.

Chris Patten, the former Tory chairman, warned that there was no outcome that would prevent Brexit from causing division for years to come. “It would be nice to think that some kind of solution – a Norway option, another referendum, or May’s deal, or plunging out without a deal – would actually close the debate and the lion would lie down with the lamb, but I don’t see it happening,” he said. “It will go on and on and on.”