MAY’S ‘SCARE BID’
THERESA May last night faced claims she was plotting to ‘scare people witless’ with a summer of warnings about a ‘no-deal’ Brexit.
Brexiteers complained that ministers were attempting to ‘weaponise’ preparations for leaving the EU without an agreement.
The Prime Minister yesterday said the public should ‘take comfort’ that the Government was putting in place contingencies such as stockpiling medicine and food.
But an ally of Mrs May claimed her plans to release 70 official documents in the coming weeks on how to prepare for the possibility of leaving the EU without a deal were aimed at building support for her beleaguered Brexit blueprint from Chequers.
‘We want to scare people witless so people will eventually embrace the Theresa May plan,’ the unnamed Conservative MP told the BBC’s Newsnight.
Last night Mrs May insisted that she was not trying to alarm the public.
she said: ‘Far from being worried about preparations that we’re making, I would say that people should take reassurance and comfort. It’s right that we say because we don’t know what the outcome is going to be, we think it’s going to be a good one, we’re working for a good one but let’s prepare for every eventuality.’
When asked on Channel 5 News if she was a committed Brexiteer, the PM replied: ‘I am committed to delivering Brexit for the British people and I am committed to delivering Brexit in a way where we can take the opportunities of Brexit and build a better future for this country and for the people of this country.’
It came as Irish foreign minister simon Coveney yesterday dismissed talk of Britain leaving without a deal as ‘bravado’.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘I don’t believe that Britain can afford a no-deal Brexit, I don’t believe Ireland or the EU want that either.
‘The negative implications of a no-deal Brexit are very significant for Ireland and the UK. We all have an obligation to make sure that doesn’t happen. I think it’s very unlikely to happen.’
Meanwhile, Boris Johnson last night launched an assault on Mrs May’s proposals as he demanded that the PM ‘chuck Chequers’.
Writing in The spectator, he said: ‘You can’t leave an organisation and still be bound by its rules. But that is what the Chequers White Paper means. It is vassalage, satrapy, colony status for the UK. For the first time in a thousand years our laws will be made overseas, enforced by a foreign court. It can’t and won’t work.’
The former foreign secretary, who resigned in protest over the Chequers plan, compared the proposals that will keep the UK tied to rules from Brussels on goods to quitting your job but still getting instructions from your ex-boss.
He wrote: ‘What would you do if you had to obey all the organisation’s rules, and do exactly what they told you?
‘What if you got regular emails saying, “do this, do that, make me a cup of coffee, your skirt’s too short, please cough up for the company car park” – even when you had left? You’d go nuts.’ Mrs May and her Cabinet are planning to spend the summer touring the UK and Europe attempting to build support for her plan.
The PM will today tell farmers at the Royal Welsh show that Brexit will mean a farming sector ‘fit for the future’.
At the event in Llanelwedd, Powys, she will say: ‘Leaving the EU presents us with a unique opportunity to transform our food, farming and environmental policies so we can have a healthy and prosperous agricultural industry that is fit for the future, and helps us to leave the environment in a better place than we found it.
‘scrapping the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy, and introducing a simpler system which provides funds in return for public goods, like improving water quality, reducing emissions and planting wildflower meadows to boost biodiversity, is fundamental to our new approach.’
Home secretary sajid Javid will visit Lisbon today to discuss future security co-operation with his Portuguese counterpart.
The City will thrive after Brexit, the chairman of Barclays has said. John McFarlane said that any damage caused by disruption as we leave will be only temporary.
‘I don’t think in the long run there will be terminal damage to London,’ the 71-year-old said.
The banker also said that the EU needed the City’s markets, adding: ‘While it is all to play for, we should play for it and secure it.
‘Economic logic must win through, and therefore we have a very good chance of securing something.’