‘It’s not too late to save Brexit from this disaster’
Boris urges May to drop Chequers plan in resignation speech Warns proposal would mean ‘miserable limbo’
BORIS JOHNSON has declared it is “not too late to save Brexit” and that Britain must be spared the “democratic disaster” of Theresa May’s Chequers plan.
In a devastating first parliamentary speech since his resignation as foreign secretary, he said the Prime Minister’s Chequers proposal would leave the UK in a state of “miserable permanent limbo” as well as “economic vassalage” to the EU.
Mrs May could still fix Brexit, he said, if she returned to the “glorious vision” she set out in her Lancaster House speech 18 months ago.
Writing in today’s Daily Telegraph,
Nick Timothy, Theresa May’s former chief of staff, agrees with Mr Johnson over the Lancaster House plan. Mr Timothy describes the current situa- tion as “deeply depressing” and says that if Britain leaves the EU in “chaos” or does not leave the EU at all, “a national humiliation greater than Suez awaits”.
Mr Johnson’s intervention was com- pared to the resignation speech of Sir Geoffrey Howe, the deputy prime minister in 1990, which started the events that brought down Margaret Thatcher.
On his return to the back benches, Mr Johnson chose the seat next to the one from which Sir Geoffrey delivered his fatal blow, though allies insisted it did not amount to a leadership bid.
Nevertheless, his speech, in which he accused Mrs May of “dithering” and losing her original Brexit plan in “a fog of self-doubt”, focused attention on the Prime Minister’s future. Last night, as Mrs May faced her backbenchers for the last time before the summer recess, she warned them that this week’s bitter Tory in-fighting over Europe was increasing the chances of Jeremy Corbyn becoming prime minister.
A Eurosceptic MP said Brexit had taken the party to “breaking point”, adding: “We looked into the abyss.”
Mrs May would face a no-confidence vote in her leadership if 48 Tory MPS submit letters to the chairman of the back-bench 1922 Committee calling for one, but Simon Clarke, one of the MPS who has submitted such a letter, told her he was withdrawing it to give her space in negotiations with Brussels.
It came as it emerged Mrs May will use the summer recess to visit sceptical Tories across the country and convince them of her plan for Brexit, and that the Government would publish 70 technical notes telling businesses how to prepare for a “no deal” Brexit.
In a clinical dissection of Mrs May’s Chequers plan, Mr Johnson said her blueprint would make it harder to do free trade deals. He said Mrs May had adopted “a fantastical Heath Robinson customs arrangement”.
But he said: “It is not too late to save Brexit. We have time in these negotiations, we have changed tack once and we can change again.” He said Mrs May had not “even tried” to make the case for a free trade agreement with the EU, but “we must try now”.
He added: “It is absolute nonsense to imagine – as I fear some of my colleagues do – that we can somehow afford to make a botched treaty now, and then break and reset the bone later on.”
The Brexit deal, he said, must not involve the “democratic disaster of ‘ongoing harmonisation’ with no way out and no say for the UK”. He added: “We need to take one decision now before all others – and that is to believe in this country and what it can do.”
Dominic Raab, the new Brexit Secretary, paid tribute to Mr Johnson’s “passion and optimism”, while Jacob Rees-mogg described it as “the speech of a statesman”.