Jessica Elgot – The Guardian
Theresa May has insisted she will be the prime minister who takes the UK out of the EU, hinting that she has no intention of standing aside if she loses the crucial vote on her deal in parliament.
Speaking at the G20 summit in Argentina ahead of a treacherous nine days leading up to the meaningful vote on her Brexit deal, when up to 100 of her party’s MPs could vote against her, May said she believed there was a lot more she had to achieve although she dodged a question about her political legacy.
“There is a lot more for me still to do, not least delivering on Brexit and being the prime minster that does take the United Kingdom out of the European Union,” she said.
May did not engage with questions over the resignation of Sam Gyimah, the universities minister, but said that she would ramp up efforts to engage her Conservative colleagues in the coming days.
“The next nine days are a really important time for our country leading up to the vote,” she said, saying she would be “talking with members of parliament obviously and explaining to them why this is a good deal for the UK”.
May said the deal would create “certainty for the future” and said that was also the desire of world leaders at the summit in Buenos Aires. “Failure to do that would only lead to uncertainty and what I’ve been hearing at the G20 is the importance of certainty for the future.”
In her opening remarks, the prime minister said the summit had been “the opportunity to update friends and partners on the agreement we have reached on our exit from the European Union — and I have set out how it represents a good deal for the global economy”.
May said that at the summit, “friends and partners [have been] making clear that they are keen to sign and implement ambitious free trade agreements with us as soon as possible”.
May met leaders including the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, the Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, and the Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, all of whom expressed concerns about the state of her Brexit deal.
Abe, who Downing Street sees as a close ally on Brexit matters, told May to avoid a no-deal Brexit, hinting that investors from Japan needed predictability and stability.
“I would like to once again ask for your support to avoid no deal,” he said. “As well as to ensure transparency, predictability [and] legal stability in the Brexit process.”
In an earlier bilateral meeting, Morrison acknowledged that May had a difficult situation to navigate. The Australian PM politely said that she had been dealing in “typical British fashion” with “a very tough set of issues”.
“I think you’ve shown great resilience and great determination on one of the most vexed issues I think there is,” he added in a diplomatic reference to her domestic struggles.
Speaking at the close of the summit, May denied that the backstop element of her deal risked the UK not being able to sign any wide-reaching future trade deals with the rest of the world. “It was identified in the G20 discussions … that trade and looking at the future of trade is about more than goods,” she said.
One bilateral meeting that did not focus on trade was May’s meeting with the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, in which the prime minister raised the issues of the war in Yemen and the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
May would not say whether she had asked the crown prince questions about his personal involvement in ordering the killing of the Washington Post columnist at the Saudi embassy in Istanbul.
She said that she had told the crown prince the investigation should “identify those who were involved” and said it was “important those that are involved are held to account”.
Vladimir Putin, asked whether he had talked to May at the G20 summit, was vague. “We saw each other,” said the Russian president. “The UK is an important partner of Russia, I hope that one day soon we will be able to overcome the difficulties we have in our relations and achieve positive trend in our cooperation which would serve the interests of both Russia and the UK.”
Putin also responded to comments from the UK’s new army chief, General Mark Carleton-Smith, that Russia posed a greater threat to the UK than Isis. The Russian president said: “When they make such statements and they compare us to other people, putting Russia alongside terrorist groups, it’s between the people who say such things and their conscience.
“ As for terrorists, Russia more than any country has made an important contribution to fighting terrorism. Such statements are usually stemming from politicians who want to demonstrate to their voters how tough they are.”