Boris Johnson condemns Theresa May’s Brexit ‘remedy’

Theresa May’s suggestion that issues with Brexit can be remedied in talks are “a tragic illusion” or “an attempt at deception,” warns Boris Johnson.

British Prime Minister Theresa May’s suggestion that issues with the Brexit deal can be remedied in talks over its future ties with the bloc are “a tragic illusion” or “an attempt at deception,” former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson says.

In the days since she unveiled a draft EU divorce deal, Mrs May’s leadership has been thrust into crisis. Several ministers, including her Brexit minister, have resigned and some of her own members of parliament are seeking to oust her.

Following strong criticism of her exit deal, Mrs May used an interview on Sunday to emphasise the outline agreement on Britain’s future relationship with the bloc was still being negotiated and would deliver on the 2016 Brexit vote.

“Of all the lies that are currently being peddled, the worst is that this agreement can somehow be remedied in the next stage of the talks,” Mr Johnson wrote in his weekly column for The Daily Telegraph.

“I have heard it said that this is like a football match, in which we are one- nil down at half-time, but as the Prime Minister suggested in her interview ... we can still pull it back and get the Brexit we want,” Mr Johnson wrote. “I am afraid this is either a tragic illusion or an attempt at deception ... we are about to give the EU the right to veto our departure from the customs union. Why should they let us go?”

Mr Johnson, who resigned in protest at Mrs May’s Brexit plans in July, is viewed as a potential successor to the British leader.

Setting out his own suggestions for the way forward, Mr Johnson said Britain should scrap the so-called Northern Ireland backstop, an insurance policy to avoid a return to border checks between the British province and EU-member Ireland. The backstop, one of the most contentious parts of the deal, would mean Britain being trapped in “economic and political servitude” to the EU, he said. Instead, both sides could discuss creating new unobtrusive checks away from the frontier, he said.

Britain should also withhold at least half of the £39 billion ($A68.5bn) divorce payment until an enhanced Canada-style free trade deal between the EU and UK had been reached, he said, adding that preparations for leaving without a deal should be accelerated.

“This needs to be treated as a challenge to be overcome, not as an inevitable disaster; because after the short-term logistical difficulties, the prospects for jobs and growth, and free-trade deals, would be very good indeed,” he said.

‘A change of leadership isn’t going to make it easier’

Mrs May warned that a leadership change wouldn’t make Brexit negotiations easier, as opponents in her Conservative Party threaten to unseat her and the former Brexit secretary suggested she failed to stand up to bullying from European Union officials.

As furious Conservative rebels try to gather the numbers to trigger a no-confidence vote, Mrs May insisted she hadn’t considered quitting. “A change of leadership at this point isn’t going to make the negotiations any easier and it isn’t going to change the parliamentary arithmetic,” she told Sky News.

Mrs May added that the next seven days “are going to be critical” for successful Brexit talks, and that she will be travelling to Brussels to meet with EU leaders before an emergency European Council summit on November. 25.

An announcement last week that Britain has struck a draft divorce agreement with the EU triggered a political crisis in Britain, with the deal roundly savaged by both the opposition and large chunks of May’s own Conservatives. Two Cabinet ministers and several junior government members quit, and more than 20 lawmakers have submitted letters of no confidence in May.

Forty-eight such letters — or 15 per cent of Conservative lawmakers — are needed for a leadership challenge vote. Asked about the attacks directed at her, Mrs May said: “It doesn’t distract me. Politics is a tough business and I’ve been in it for a long time.”

Dominic Raab, who quit Thursday as Brexit secretary, said “there is one thing missing and that is political will and resolve.”

“If we cannot close this deal on reasonable terms, we need to be very honest with the country that we will not be bribed and blackmailed or bullied and we will walk away,” he told The Sunday Times.

Many pro-Brexit Conservatives want a clean break with the EU and argue that the close trade ties between the UK and the EU called for in the deal would leave Britain a vassal state, with no way to independently disentangle itself from the bloc.

The draft agreement envisions Britain leaving the EU as planned on March 29, but remaining inside the bloc’s single market and bound by its rules until the end of December 2020.

It also commits the two sides to the contentious “backstop” solution, which would keep the UK in a customs arrangement with the EU until a permanent trade treaty is worked out. That will serve to guarantee that the border between the UK’s Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland remained free of customs checkpoints after Brexit.

Both Britain and the EU want to ensure Northern Ireland’s hard-won peace process isn’t undermined, but reaching an agreement on how to achieve that had long been a key obstacle in the negotiations.

Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May.

Enough to challenge ‘within two days’

The number of Tory MPs known to have submitted letters of no confidence in Mrs May has risen to 25 as hard Brexiteers claimed that they were on target to reach more than 50 in the next two days.

The former London mayoral candidate Zac Goldsmith became the latest high-profile Conservative to declare that he had lost confidence in the prime minister and said that the party needed a “fresh start”.

The veteran Eurosceptic MP Sir Bill Cash said yesterday that he had also submitted a formal declaration of no confidence in the prime minister, accusing her of “broken promises”.

One senior Tory said that the number of MPs who would have privately written to Sir Graham Brady, chairman of the 1922 Committee of backbench Tories which oversees the election of party leaders, was likely to be “at least a dozen”. The senior Tory added: “If there are 25 who have said they’ve put in letters then they must be nearly there. There will be a load of people who won’t have admitted it.”

Yesterday Sir Graham, who will declare when the threshold of 48 letters has been reached, confirmed publicly for the first time that the target had not been met. He added that if and when it was he would “expeditiously” trigger a formal vote of no confidence in the prime minister. Sources suggested that this could come within 24 hours of the threshold being met.

“The whole thing is written with the intention that it should be an expeditious process,” Sir Graham told Pienaar’s Politics on BBC Radio 5 Live, adding that “it ought to be a test of opinion very quickly, in order to clear the air and get it resolved”.

Sir Graham said that even his wife and other officers on the 1922 Committee had no idea how many letters had been received. “I get asked it in the supermarket, I get asked it in the street,” he said. “I’ve become very nervous about counting, or saying numbers, in case people think I’m saying something that I’m not. Victoria does not know, nor do the two vice-chairmen of the 1922 Committee or the other officers.”

Sir Graham said that past experience had taught him to be cautious about taking declared statements of intent at face value. Under the rules MPs can submit letters and withdraw them at any stage before a contest is triggered.

Sir Graham said: “I’ve been doing this job for eight years and some years ago I certainly had the experience of seeing somebody claiming publicly to have written me a letter when they hadn’t.” The same MP announced in the media that they had withdrawn the letter that they had not written in the first place, he added.

Steve Baker, the former Brexit minister, who is co-ordinating the letter-writing campaign, has said that he has had pledges from more than 50 MPs.

If a vote of confidence is triggered Mrs May would only have to win the support of half her parliamentary party to carry on and could not be challenged again for another year. However, one MP said if more than 100 out of the Tories’ 315 MPs voted against her or abstained her position would almost certainly be untenable.

Sir Graham predicted that Mrs May would win a confidence vote and told the northwest edition of the BBC One Sunday Politics program: “It would be a huge relief for me because people would have to stop asking me questions about numbers of letters for at least 12 months.”

Reuters, The Times