Brexit news: Rees-Mogg and Brexiteer Tories signal they will vote down May's deal again

'It’s back to square one – we can’t leave [the backstop] without the EU agreeing'

Jacob Rees-Mogg and other Brexiteer Tories have signalled they will again vote down Theresa May’s deal, in aggressive questioning of the Brexit secretary.

Stephen Barclay was given a rough ride as he struggled to defend the prime minister’s claim to have secured significant changes to allow the UK to escape the Irish backstop.

John Whittingdale, a former cabinet minister, said the attorney general’s refusal to change his legal advice that the UK could still be trapped was “pretty terminal”, adding: “Nothing has actually changed.”

Peter Bone, another leading Brexiteer, said ministers were asking him to support a deal that was “not the right to pull out of the Irish backstop”.

And, most significantly, Mr Rees-Mogg, told Mr Barclay: “This has been advertised as a unilateral ability [to escape the backstop] – it’s not unilateral.

“It’s back to square one – we can’t leave without the EU agreeing.”

Mr Rees-Mogg, the chairman of the hardline European Research Group of Tory MPs, said the UK – despite Ms May’s claim of “legally-binding changes” – could still only “ask to leave the backstop”.

“That has been blindingly obvious to everyone. The ability ‘to ask’ is not the ability ‘to’ [leave] – is it?” he told Mr Barclay.

In response, the Brexit secretary said: “I don't accept that. This is both a question of legal interpretation and political interpretation.”

But he acknowledged that the UK’s ability to end the backstop would rest on it proving “bad faith” by the EU – and ducked an opportunity to state a precedent for proving that in international law.

Mr Barclay said the agreement “reduces the risk” of being trapped in the backstop but did not eliminate it because “one has to prove bad faith”.

“To say it eliminates it ignores the fact that one has to prove bad faith,” he told the Commons Brexit committee.

Mr Barclay also fell back on arguing that “the starting point for this is that neither side wants to go into the backstop, there are safeguards to prevent it”.