HUNT: EU IS LIKE A SOVIET JAIL
We won’t be only prisoner that wants to escape, he warns Brussels
JEREMY Hunt likened the EU to a Soviet jail last night, and warned: ‘We won’t be the only prisoner that will want to escape.’
The one-time Remainer, who is considered a future leadership contender, used a speech to the Tory conference to bolster his Eurosceptic credentials.
He attacked EU intransigence in Brexit negotiations and savaged those in Brussels who believe ‘the way to keep the club together is to punish a member who leaves’.
The Foreign Secretary added: ‘The EU was set up to protect freedom. It was the Soviet Union that stopped people leaving.
‘The lesson from history is clear. If you turn the EU into a prison, the desire to get out won’t diminish, it will grow and we won’t be the only prisoner that will want to escape.’
He warned the EU not to ‘reject the hand of friendship offered by our Prime Minister’, and said: ‘If you put a country like Britain in a corner, we don’t crumble. We fight.’
But he also told Eurosceptics they could be left with ‘no Brexit at all’ if they continue to undermine Mrs May, adding: ‘However fierce the debate, however high the passions, never forget that disunity and division won’t give us a better Brexit but the wrong Brexit, a Corbyn Brexit or perhaps no Brexit at all.’
Mr Hunt echoed Margaret Thatcher as he told EU leaders that if they wanted to break up the UK with a border in the Irish Sea the answer was: ‘No! No! No!’
Speaking to The Daily Telegraph he added: ‘The way Britain reacts is not that we crumble or fold, but actually you end up invoking the Dunkirk spirit and we fight back.
‘If President Macron thinks… we will come crawling back desperate to rejoin the club in a few years’ time… it is a profound misreading of our character.’
Boris Johnson had told The Sunday Times to attack not just the Chequers deal – calling it ‘deranged’ – but the Prime Minister herself.
He said: ‘Unlike the Prime Minister, I campaigned for Brexit. Unlike the Prime Minister, I fought for this, I believe in it.’
But Mrs May declared for the first time: ‘I do believe in Brexit.’
Speaking on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, she added: ‘ But crucially I believe in delivering Brexit in a way that respects the vote and delivers on behalf of the British people, while also protecting our union, protecting jobs and ensuring we make a success of it.’
Mrs May, whose Chequers plan has angered Tory MPs and activists, also tried to rebrand the proposal as a ‘free-trade deal’, and said that the Canada- style deal favoured by Mr Johnson and other Eurosceptics was ‘not on the table’ unless Britain accepted the EU’s demand that Northern Ireland stay in the customs union.
Mr Johnson also faced a backlash from senior Tories. Former Brexit secretary David Davis said there was an 80-90 per cent chance a Brexit deal would be struck, but brinkmanship by the EU would lead to a ‘very scary few months’.
He accused Mr Johnson of using Brexit to bolster his leadership ambitions, adding: ‘ I want a change of policy, not a change of leader, and where I differ from Boris is he is conflating the two.’
Mrs May yesterday tried to calm grassroots anger about the Chequers deal at a meeting with constituency party chairmen. But Ajay Jagota, from South Shields, said: ‘She hasn’t won me over with the deal. If she doesn’t change I would like to see a change of Prime Minister. I don’t think she’ll survive.’
Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab will warn Brussels today that the scope for further concessions is limited. He will say: ‘Our willingness to compromise is not without limits. We are leaving the EU. If we can’t obtain a deal that secures that objective... we will be left with no choice but to leave without a deal.’
Leading Brexiteer Jacob ReesMogg told a packed meeting that Chequers was opposed by Tories, Labour and the EU, adding: ‘It is not only a dying duck in a thunderstorm, it is deadest of dying ducks.’
‘A change of policy, not a change of leader’