UNRIVALLED REPORTS & ANALYSIS:
BORIS Johnson’s dramatic resignation came after he refused to put his name to a Downing Street-drafted article supporting the Chequers agreement, it emerged last night.
Mr Johnson, who quit the Government yesterday, had appeared to have fallen into line with the negotiating strategy announced on Friday evening – despite apparently referring to it as a ‘t**d’.
He was even said to have congratulated the Prime Minister at dinner for securing Cabinet agreement. But on Saturday he refused to sign off a joint newspaper article with the Remain-backing Chancellor Philip Hammond – a long-term Remainer – supporting the deal.
A friend said Mr Johnson took one look at the article and said: ‘I can’t put my name to this.’ A text drafted by No 10 was passed to the Treasury, then sent on to the FCO on Saturday. But seeing the consequences of the deal in black and white made him realise he would have to quit, allies revealed.
‘At that point he knew it was indefensible,’ the friend said.
On Sunday a series of articles purporting to be written by Cabinet ministers supporting the deal were placed in newspapers. Both Mr Johnson and Brexit Secretary David Davis were conspicuous by their absence.
By yesterday, according to allies, Mr Johnson was ‘racked with doubt’ about whether to stay in the Cabinet at all and concluded he simply couldn’t improve the deal from inside government.
He telephoned Downing Street yesterday lunchtime and told them he planned to announce his resignation in the evening.
But No 10 refused to allow him that luxury and – in a clear attempt to spike his guns – made the unusual decision to announce his departure in a short statement at 3pm, before Mr Johnson had even finished composing his resignation letter.
It emerged hours later, warning that the UK was heading for a ‘Semi-Brexit’ as a ‘colony’ of Brussels and that the dream of the Leave campaign – to take back control of our democracy – was ‘dying’.
In her icy reply last night, the Prime Minister said she was ‘a little surprised’ to see Mr Johnson departing the Government after the Cabinet signed off on her deal at Chequers on Friday. She suggested he was going back on his word.
But after Mr Davis quit the Government at midnight, speculation quickly swirled around Westminster that Mr Johnson would follow. The rumours soon reached fever pitch when he failed to attend a meeting of the Government’s emergency Cobra committee at 1pm to discuss the Salisbury poisonings.
He had also been expected to host, but was notably absent from, the Western Balkans Summit in London’s Docklands yesterday afternoon, involving ministers from several EU states.
Instead, he spent the day locked in talks with advisers at his official residence, Carlton Gardens. As the atmosphere turned febrile, it was suggested No.10 had enraged Mr Johnson by offering his job to Mr Davis in a desperate attempt to get him to stay inside the Cabinet, something denied by Mrs May’s aides.
Allies of the Foreign Secretary insisted last night that neither this, nor leadership ambitions, was ultimately a factor in his decision to leave Indeed, when his resignation letter was finally released, it was a vivid deconstruction of the Prime Minister’s Brexit strategy. Savaging the PM’s Chequers deal, he said vast swathes of the economy would be ‘locked in’ to Brussels rules but with no influence over them.
He also launched a scathing attack on the Prime Minister personally, accusing her of being ‘suffocated by needless self doubt’ and of running up the white flag to Brussels. And he warned this ‘disturbing’ opening bid could be followed by further concessions on immigration and money ‘for access to the single market’.
Unlike Mr Davis – who notably backed Mrs May staying in office in interviews yesterday – Mr Johnson made no such offers of support.
Mr Johnson wrote: ‘ Brexit should be about opportunity and hope. It should be a chance to do things differently, to be more nimble and dynamic, and to maximise the particular advantages of the UK as an open, outwardlooking global economy. That dream is dying, suffocated by needless self- doubt.’
Mr Johnson said the failure to prepare for ‘no deal’ means ‘we appear to be heading for a semiBrexit, with large parts of the economy still locked in the EU system, but with no UK control over that system.’
And he condemned Mrs May’s customs proposals, the Facilitated Customs Arrangement, calling it an ‘impractical and undeliverable customs arrangement unlike any other
‘Locked in the EU system’
in existence.’ In his letter, Mr Johnson accepted that on Friday he had congratulated the Prime Minister on ‘at least reaching a Cabinet decision on the way forward’, but added: ‘As I said then, the Government now has a song to sing. The trouble is I have practised the words over the weekend and find that they stick in the throat.’
Last Thursday night, David Cameron made an extraordinary appeal to Mr Johnson not to resign.
The former prime minister, acting with the blessing of Mrs May, met for drinks with his fellow Old Etonian at a London club just hours before the make-or-break summit.
Last Wednesday other pro-Leave cabinet ministers met Mr Johnson in the Foreign Office as details of Mrs May’s proposals leaked out. Penny Mordaunt, Andrea Leadsom, Esther McVey, Liam Fox, Chris Grayling, Michael Gove and Mr Davis – as well as Gavin Williamson – discussed the plan. A similar group met the next day to plan tactics for Chequers in an attempt to push an alternative plan.