Operation Stop Boris
Even before MPs vote, Tories are plotting over new leadership
‘Too fraught with risk’
BORIS Johnson made a thinly disguised pitch for the Tory leadership yesterday amid signs of concerted plotting among some senior ministers.
In an interview with a website popular with Tory activists, the former Foreign Secretary launched an astonishing assault on the Prime Minister’s Brexit deal.
He said it was full of ‘humiliations’ and suggested it was equivalent to the terms that might be imposed on a nation that had suffered a military defeat.
And he went on to claim EU chiefs will not stop until they have ‘worked out a way to plunder Scottish waters for their fish’.
Many fishing communities across Scotland voted Leave in a bid to break away from the hated Common Fisheries Policy (CFP).
However, concerns have been raised that fishing rights could be traded away in future talks, with French President Emmanuel Macron claiming he will use access as leverage.
Writing in the Press & Journal newspaper yesterday, Mr Johnson said: ‘Theresa May’s deal hands the EU the indefinite power to bully and blackmail this country to get whatever it wants in negotiations.
‘And if history teaches us anything, it is that our European friends will not desist until they have worked out a way to plunder Scottish waters for their fish.’ Meanwhile, Remainer Tories were revealed to be working to ‘stop Boris’ amid reports up to 20 MPs could quit the party if Theresa May is ousted next week and he wins the leadership.
Former Attorney General Dominic Grieve, former business minister Anna Soubry and backbench MPs Heidi Allan and Sarah Wollaston were among the names floated yesterday.
The Home Secretary Sajid Javid and Leader of the House Andrea Leadsom also sparked speculation about a ‘joint ticket’ by inviting MPs to a joint Christmas party. Aides insisted the only reason for the event was their offices were next door.
In an interview with the ConservativeHome website yesterday, Mr Johnson suggested Mrs May had ‘collaborated’ with the EU by agreeing to the customs backstop. ‘It’s unbelievable. It’s a kind of S&M approach to government. What perversion is it where you want to be locked up in chains.’
It also emerged Mr Johnson had compared his predicament over Brexit to that of Winston Churchill in the Second World War.
He said Churchill gambled by confronting Germany in the face of opposition from appeasers.
In comments which risked accusations he was comparing the EU to Nazi Germany, he told financial firms in Amsterdam the result was to ‘rescue this continent... from a pretty odious tyranny.
‘And I think the only lesson I draw from that is that sometimes you do need to do the difficult thing and take a position that everyone says is too fraught with risk.’