May insists Brexit deal is not dead despite EU leaders refusing to make further concessions

Theresa May has insisted her Brexit deal is not dead despite a bruising summit in Brussels in which EU leaders made no significant concessions to help her pass the agreement.

Speaking on Friday after the meeting the prime minister accepted that her “MPs will require further assurances” to pass the controversial plan after the EU ripped up a commitment to help.

EU leaders last night only released a bare-bones statement of “reassurances”, and deleted pledges from earlier drafts which had said the bloc “stands ready to examine whether any further assurance can be provided”.

But the prime minister insisted that “as formal conclusions, these commitments have legal status and therefore should be welcomed”.

She told reporters that after a round of diplomacy this morning it was clear to her that “further clarification and discussion following the Council’s conclusions is in fact possible” despite the conclusions.

The PM insisted there would be further discussions in the coming days.

Ahead of the meeting some EU officials had suggested a more substantial package to help the PM might be held back until the New Year when it was judged to be more effective – but it is not clear whether this plan is still on the cards.

But even such a further step appears unlikely to assuage Tory eurosceptics, who want a legally binding mechanism for the UK to leave the treaty’s Northern Ireland backstop. The bloc has ruled this out, said it would effectively render the backstop ineffective, and that it will not reopen the withdrawal agreement.

That backstop policy ties the UK to the EU’s customs area and ramps up checks on goods between Great Britain and Northern Ireland in order to prevent a hard border with the Republic of Ireland.

“As formal conclusions, these commitments have legal status and therefore should be welcomed. As I have always said, the guaranteed way of avoiding the backstop is to have the future partnership in place by the time the implementation period is over. The EU is very firmly committed to this course,” she said.

“But MPs will require further assurances, and I have discussed that this morning with my EU partners, including Presidents Tusk, Juncker and others.

“I note there has been reporting that the EU is not willing to consider any further clarification. The EU is clear – as I am – that if we are going to leave with a deal this is it. But my discussions with colleagues today have shown that further clarification and discussion following the Council’s conclusions is in fact possible.

“There is work still to do and we will be holding talks in coming days about how to obtain the further assurances that the UK Parliament needs in order to be able to approve the deal.”

Accounts of last night’s meeting suggest the prime minister’s speech, in which she called for help to get the agreement “over the line”, was repeatedly interrupted by Angela Merkel asking her what she actually wanted from them.

Senior UK government officials admitted that the prime minister did not bring any documented proposals with her to the meeting.

 Theresa May and Jean-Claude Juncker had an icy conversation on Sunday morning

The approach puzzled EU diplomats, who for days before the conference had said they needed to see what proposals Ms May had come up with before they could respond to her request for aid.

Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Commission president, said at a midnight press conference after the discussion: “I do find it uncomfortable that there’s an impression perhaps in the UK that it is for the EU to propose solutions.

“It is for the UK leaving the EU and I would have thought that it was rather more for the British government.”

In the margins of the summit the meeting is already being called “Salzburg 2.0” – a reference to a previous summit in September where the prime minister’s dinner speech also ended up accidentally hardening the EU position.

The statement issued by leaders warns that the withdrawal agreement “is not open for renegotiation”, but clarifying that the controversial backstop will “apply temporarily, unless and until it is superseded by a subsequent agreement” and that the EU will “use its best endeavours” to get it replaced quickly “so that the backstop would only be in place for as long as strictly necessary”.

They assured the UK it was EU’s “firm determination to work speedily” to replace it with a trade agreement.

The statement will be of little help to the prime minister, who is struggling to get her deal through parliament after a bruising confidence vote on Wednesday where over 100 of her own MPs said she should quit.

In one positive for the prime minister Mr Juncker, the commission president, said he wanted talks on the future relationship to begin as soon as the House of Commons had approved the agreement – as a sign that the EU was serious about replacing the backstop. But the token gesture alone is unlikely to persuade Brexiteers.

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