‘We don’t want to trap the UK’: Irish PM offers more ‘assurances’ on backstop in May’s Brexit deal

Irish PM Leo Varadkar today insisted the EU does not want to ‘trap’ the UK as he held out the prospect of more ‘assurances’ on the Brexit deal.

Mr Varadkar sounded a conciliatory note as he made clear the bloc will give written commitments that the Irish border backstop would only be temporary. 

But other EU ministers have insisted the guarantees, expected before the crunch Commons vote next week, will only be ‘political’ rather than legally binding as Theresa May had hoped.

Attending a summit in Dublin, France’s Nathalie Loiseau said: ‘There is nothing more we can do.’ 

The PM is scrambling to win over mutinous MPs as she stares down the barrel of a disastrous defeat in the vote on her Brexit deal, due to happen next Tuesday.

Ministers are said to be urging Mrs May to give Parliament the final say on whether the backstop takes effect, as well as the right to exit the Treaty after 12 months if Brussels is not behaving fairly.

A Cabinet source told The Times the government should present the EU with those conditions on a take-it-or-leave-it basis – with no deal the alternative.

However, there are currently few signs that the change would satisfy the DUP and Eurosceptics, or that Brussels would agree to those terms. 

Sources have suggested they are instead proposing an ‘exchange of letters’ with Mrs May, setting out the bloc’s intention to conclude a trade deal by 2021.

That timetable would mean the backstop need never come into effect, but experts have voiced scepticism about whether it is possible.

Ireland’s foreign affairs minister Simon Coveney warned MPs that the time for ‘wishful thinking’ is over if the UK wants to avoid crashing out of the EU – and also admitted that his country would be seriously damaged.

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