It’s now too late to stop No Deal, PM’s aide claims
SENIOR Downing Street advisers believe MPs have left it too late to stop a No Deal Brexit, it emerged last night.
Boris Johnson’s top aides say he can take Britain out of the EU on October 31 – honouring his ‘do or die’ pledge – even if rebel Tories and Labour force a general election.
Dominic Cummings, the former Vote Leave strategist who has taken a key role in No10, has argued Mr Johnson could use his powers to set the election date for after Halloween. That would mean Britain leaving on the 31st.
Mr Cummings told officials at one meeting last week that EU leaders such as French president Emmanuel Macron ‘think we’re bluffing’ or believe that ‘MPs will cancel the referendum’, The Sunday Telegraph reported.
He added: ‘They don’t realise that if there is a no-confidence vote in September or October, we’ll call an election for after the 31st and we’ll leave anyway.’
Mr Johnson has left the door open to EU leaders to negotiate a new deal without the ‘undemocratic’ Northern Irish backstop, which he says will keep Britain trapped in parts of the single market and customs union.
He has even coined a term for what he wants
‘We could bring down the Government’
from Brussels: a ‘backstopectomy’. No compromise short of removing the backstop will have any hope of getting through Parliament, Downing Street officials believe.
Mr Johnson has ‘turbo-charged’ No Deal preparations with £2billion, vowing to deliver Brexit ‘by any means necessary’.
A group of Tory MPs led by former attorney general Dominic Grieve are set to join forces with Jeremy Corbyn and other opposition parties to try to stop No Deal when Parliament returns next month.
But they have a window of about five working weeks to move against No10. MPs will return on September 3, but then break again for party conference season the following week.
Last night Mr Grieve insisted MPs could bring down the Government to stop No Deal, and accused Mr Cummings of being a ‘master of disinformation’.
‘He’s right when he points out that for the House of Commons to prevent a No Deal Brexit...there are a whole series of obstacles,’ he told the BBC. ‘So he has a point, but I think he may also be missing the point that there are a number of things the House of Commons can do, including bringing down the Government and setting up a new one in its place.’
Labour health spokesman Jonathan Ashworth also said he did not agree MPs could do nothing.
‘There will be opportunities for us when Parliament returns in September to stop No Deal,’ he told Sky News. Legal advice prepared by Attorney General Geoffrey Cox has reportedly argued there is no legal basis to prevent the Prime Minister from forcing No Deal even if it happens during an election campaign.
Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay yesterday said Brussels chief negotiator Michel Barnier should tear up his negotiating plan. He argued in The Mail on Sunday that the European Parliament elections in May meant the original mandate was no longer valid, and should be revised.
Meanwhile, the Brexit Party called on the Tories divide up seats between them in a Brexit deal.
MEP Claire Fox told Sky News that Mr Johnson should ‘make an approach to the Brexit Party’ and ‘stand aside in certain areas’.