PM to receive delegation of MPs seeking a public plan for exit from EU, after she was stung by scale of backbench rebellion

Theresa May will face renewed demands to set out her plans for leaving the EU in a formal white paper when she meets a deputation of more than a dozen Conservative MPs opposed to a hard Brexit on Wednesday.

The prime minister is receiving the MPs in her parliamentary office after Downing Street was stung by the scale of the backbench rebellion over Brexit last week.

Before last week’s vote, some of them had indicated they could vote with a Labour motion demanding a public plan for Brexit, forcing the government to concede and underlining the slim nature of May’s majority.

Urgent Brexit deal needed to avert banking job losses, peers to warn Read more

The group has been characterised as the “new bastards” in reference to the anti-EU backbench rebels who haunted John Major in the 1990s. However, those planning to attend insisted they were not aiming to make trouble.



Tensions over Brexit have been heightened within the party in recent days after an extraordinary public spat in which Nicky Morgan, the former education secretary, was cut from the list of those planning to attend.

Morgan was told not to attend by one of May’s aides, Fiona Hill, following her critical comments about the prime minister’s £995 leather trousers.

Bob Neill, a Conservative former minister due to attend, said: “We want to be helpful, we are looking for a constructive dialogue.”



Among those in the informal group are several new-intake MPs from the 2015 election, including Johnny Mercer and Alberto Costa, as well as the vocal former business minister Anna Soubry and the former rail minister Claire Perry.

It has come together around the idea of pressing the government to maintain the closest possible economic relationship with the EU, while May is still tight-lipped about the kind of deal she wants to pursue.



The whips have also been instructed to keep a particularly close eye on Morgan, Soubry and George Osborne, the former chancellor, who is not a formal part of the group but is suspected of helping some of those pushing to stay close to the single market with their strategy.

One person due to appear at the meeting said their approach would not be confrontational, but ideally, the MPs would like May to publish a white paper.



“We want to give the government the flexibility to come up with a plan but we do want to see the fundamental principles of that plan published,” he said.

Another rebel MP said the government’s climbdown over last week’s Brexit motion demonstrated the strength of feeling on Tory benches over the need to avoid a damaging “hard Brexit”. “On the basis of the vote on Wednesday, the numbers show we’ve got a majority for the people who are sane,” the MP said.

Colleagues said on Tuesday that Morgan had been feeling “bruised” after her row, which saw May’s close adviser Hill send a text to another Tory MP saying: “Don’t bring that woman to No 10 again.”

Allies of Morgan rallied around her on Tuesday and claimed that she has been repeatedly targeted unfairly by Downing Street staff, including Hill and the other chief of staff, Nick Timothy.

In particular, they were angry that aides had briefed the media about Morgan crying when she was sacked from the cabinet, and about a description of her as a traitor after she gave an interview in the Observer.

“Do people in Downing Street seriously think it is acceptable to go around briefing that MPs you disagree with are traitors after everything that has happened this year? It’s not just wrong, it’s reckless and it needs to be called out, no matter how powerful the people briefing it,” said one close ally.

Another source suggested Morgan was not a “natural rebel” and questioned the decision to U-turn on four policies she put in place at the Department for Education without consulting her, including over the bill that would have seen widespread academisation of schools and over the National Teaching Service.

“I just don’t understand the attitude to her. I can understand why they might not have wanted her round the cabinet table, but they won so why the need to go out and trash her as well? Sure she disagrees with them on Brexit, but she could have been helpful in neutralising the hard Brexiteers. Instead they have turned someone who has been a loyal Conservative supporter since her teens into a rebel.”

The source accused Hill and Timothy of governing by “grudge” and claimed they were focused on a retaliation against David Cameron’s government. Morgan was thought to have backed Michael Gove in the Tory leadership contest in part because of concerns about how aides around May had behaved in government.

Leaked letters have suggested that the Home Office wanted to place children of illegal immigrants at the end of school waiting lists, in a move blocked by Morgan.