‘Rip up Brexit’

PUTS PRESSURE ON MAY TO DROP HER PLAN Ex-foreign secretary outlines his ‘SuperCanada-type free trade agreement’.

Brexit campaigner Boris Johnson called on Prime Minister Theresa May to rip up her proposal for Britain’s exit from the European Union, ratcheting up the pressure on May as she prepares to face her divided party at its annual conference next week.

Just six months before the United Kingdom is due to leave the European Union on March 29, 2019, little is clear: May has yet to clinch a Brexit divorce deal with the EU and rebels in her party have threatened to vote down any deal she makes.

“This is the moment to change the course of the negotiations and do justice to the ambitions of Brexit,” Johnson, who resigned in July as foreign secretary over May’s Brexit proposals, wrote in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph.

Johnson, the bookmakers’ favourite to succeed May, said May’s plans would leave the United Kingdom half in and half out of the club it joined in 1973 and in effective “enforced vassalage”.

Under the headline, “My plan for a better Brexit”, Johnson called for a “SuperCanada-type free trade agreement”.

Johnson’s outlined plan gained support from other rebels such as Conservative lawmaker Jacob Rees-Mogg, who are pushing for a deeper break with the EU.

“This is an opportunity for the UK to become more dynamic and more successful, and we should not be shy of saying that – and we should recognise it is exactly this potential our EU partners seek to constrain,” Johnson wrote.

In the June 23, 2016 referendum, 17.4 million voters, or 51.9%, backed leaving the EU, while 16.1 million voters, or 48.1%, backed staying.

May has repeatedly said her Brexit proposals are the only viable ones. –