‘Deliver people Brexit or face riots’

Senior allies of Boris Johnson warn Britain will face civil unrest on the scale of the Yellow Vest protests if Brexit is frustrated.

‘We are enjoying this’: Dominic Cummings leaves 10 Downing Street on Thursday. Picture: AP

Senior allies of Prime Minister Boris Johnson have warned that Britain will face civil unrest on the scale of the Yellow Vest protests in France or the riots in Los Angeles if Brexit is frustrated.

Mr Johnson was accused of inciting hatred towards MPs on Thursday as the backlash grew against his claim that they must deliver Brexit to be properly safe.

A senior cabinet minister told The Times that the country risked a “violent, popular uprising” if a second referendum overturned the result of the first one.

Dominic Cummings, Mr Johnson’s most senior adviser, risked further inflaming tensions when he said: “We are enjoying this, we are going to leave and we are going to win.”

He said pro-Remain MPs were not going to “listen to reason” because they had become “really badly disconnected” from what people in the “real world” outside London thought. He added that it was not surprising people were angry with MPs, accusing them of going back on a pledge to respect the referendum result.

Mr Johnson insisted he would not be bullied and vowed to keep using the term “surrender act”, a reference to legislation to delay the country’s departure from the EU. In an attempt to defuse the row, he said “tempers need to come down” but added that Britain must “lance the boil” and leave.

Despite Mr Johnson’s appeal for calm, a cabinet minister told The Times: “In this country, we never had the gilets jaunes (yellow vest) or the LA riots (in 1992).

“People don’t think it’s possible in this country just because it has not happened before.

“Now they have a model — ­gilets jaunes — they have encrypt­ed phones to co-ordinate it, and it only takes a couple of nasty populist frontmen to inspire people.”

The minister highlighted Mr Johnson’s warning in the Commons that there would be a “catastrophic loss of confidence in our political system” if Britain failed to leave. “If we have a referendum with 30 million people who vote, and we vote Remain by 66 per cent, that’s 10 million people who are unhappy,” they said.

“Even if 99 per cent of them shrug it off, that’s still 100,000 ­really angry people who will write to their MP and not let it go. It doesn’t take much and soon you have tens of thousands of people on the street.”

In other developments:

● Mr Johnson lost his seventh successive vote in parliament after MPs rejected a three-day recess next week for the Conservative Party conference.

● Tensions in the Commons spilt over into a series of confrontations in parliament.

● Commons Speaker John Bercow said that exchanges in the chamber on Wednesday were “toxic” and added that it was “worse than any I have known in my 22 years in the house”.

●Research found that the number of abusive tweets directed at MPs had more than doubled from 31,650 in January to 72,915 in June.

● The Prime Minister told cabinet on Thursday night (Friday AEST) that he believed the Tories would secure a functional majority in an election, adding that references to the “surrender act” were hurting Labour.

The government’s failure to sec­ure a conference recess means that ministers and MPs will have to shuttle between London and Manchester next week for votes in the Commons.

In a move that will further disrupt the conference, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said his party would take further “parliamentary action” to ensure Britain did not leave without a deal.

Mr Cummings was confronted by Labour MPs in parliament and told that Mr Johnson’s language had led to death threats. He said: “Get Brexit done.”

Mr Johnson also faced criticism from Tory MPs over his language. At a meeting of the 1922 Committee of Conservative backbenchers, Penny Mordaunt, the former defence secretary, said the row was an own goal that would make it more difficult to win the support of Labour MPs for a Brexit deal.

Tobias Ellwood, a former defence minister, warned Mr Johnson to reflect on his use of language, adding: “I’m not afraid to be speaking out.”

The Times