Theresa May’s Brexit plan also dismissed by key ‘Remainers’

The Guardian Britain’s former trade commissioner in Brussels, Lord Mandelson, is making common cause with hardline, anti-EU Tories, saying Theresa May’s latest Brexit blueprint would lead to “national humiliation” and leave the country in a worse position than if it turned its back on the entire European economic system.

In an extraordinary intervention that shows that even the most ardent Remainers in parliament find the plans unacceptable, the Labour peer says the plans would deliver “the polar opposite of taking back control”, and would mean “the EU would ultimately call the shots, not just now but indefinitely”.

The pro-Remain Labour MP Chuka Umunna said there was no way even the most pro-EU Labour supporters of a soft Brexit would back May’s plans. “There is no Labour Remainer who would support May’s Chequers deal or prop up her sorry excuse for a government – full stop,” he said.

Steve Baker, who quit the Government along with his boss, David Davis, last Sunday, says he resigned after discovering that for months an “establishment elite” had secretly been pursuing a plan for a much softer Brexit than the one on which he and Mr Davis had been working.

May faces further problems in the House of Commons early this week as two Brexit-related bills return to the Commons. There are suggestions that some hardline Tory Brexiters in the European Research Group, led by Jacob Rees-Mogg, could vote against or abstain in votes on the taxation (cross-border trade) bill and the separate trade bill. Were they to join with opposition MPs to prevent either bill having a third reading, the government would be thrown into further chaos over its Brexit planning.

Talks with the EU resume on Monday, and the new Brexit secretary, Dominic Raab, will meet the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, in Brussels for the first time later in the week.

David Davis is expected to make a resignation speech in the Commons on Monday, according to his supporters.