David Lidington: Brexit deal almost within touching distance
3 min read
Hopes of a Brexit breakthrough have risen after de-facto deputy prime minister David Lidington said a deal with Brussels was “almost within touching distance”.
The close ally of the PM said he was “cautiously optimistic” that an agreement between the UK and the EU27 was close just hours ahead of a crunch Cabinet meeting to discuss the issue.
Mrs May revealed yesterday that negotiators had been working through the night to thrash out a final deal, saying talks on the UK departure were in the "endgame".
Mr Lidington - who serves as First Secretary of State - urged both sides to remain “focused and determined” as he admitted some of the tough questions over the status of the Irish border remained unresolved.
But he said he was "optimistic because… the negotiators on both sides have managed to get things down to a small number of difficult issues that are still outstanding".
“We are not quite there yet. This is always going to be an extremely difficult, extremely complicated negotiation, but we are almost within touching distance now," he told the Today programme on Radio 4.
"But as the PM has said, it can’t be a deal at any price... It has to be one that works in terms of feeling we can deliver on the referendum result and that’s why there is a measure of caution.
"As always in any negotiation the things which are left in square brackets in the text, the unresolved questions, at the last stages are the most knotty, the most difficult to resolve.”
Asked if he thought a deal could be completed within the next 48 hours, Mr Lidington said it was “still possible, but not at all definite”.
“We are cautiously optimistic, but we have been at earlier stages in this negotiation and thinking we were on the final point of a breakthrough.
"There have been other stages where we or the EU side felt we had run into a road block but then we found our way around that.”
Reports have claimed Cabinet has until tomorrow night to approve a Brexit deal with enough time left to arrange an emergency EU summit to sign it off by the end of the month.
But Mr Lidington refused to say whether failure to strike a deal by Wednesday evening would force the Government to ramp up its no-deal preparations.
“I am not going to put dates or subscribed days on particular actions,” he said.
“The end of Wednesday is important, but what we have been doing in government for the two years since the referendum has been to take forward contingency planning against all eventualities.”
He added: “We both hope and we expect a deal will be negotiated at the end of the day, but it would be irresponsible not to provide against the outcome we certainly don’t want, which is a no-deal scenario.
"And there does come a point at which contingency plans have to be stepped up, simply so that in that eventually the preparations have be done. You may have to run the two things in parallel.”
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