Major’s plea for PM to disown Ultra Brexiteers
Thinly veiled attack on Boris
SIR John Major has delivered a thinly veiled attack on Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson for saying that the economy will be ‘perfectly OK’ if Britain is forced to leave the EU without a trade deal.
The former Prime Minister says Mr Johnson is part of a group of Tory ‘Ultra Brexiteers’ determined to silence all opposition to a ‘complete break’ with Brussels, with ‘disastrous’ consequences for the country.
Sir John’s ‘Ultra’ comment – in an article in today’s Mail On Sunday – is highly provocaaimed tive, as the term is often associated with violent far-Right football fans.
Although he does not name the ‘Ultras’, he leaves little doubt that he is referring to Mr Johnson and fellow prominent Tory Brexiteers Michael Gove, Iain Duncan Smith and Jacob Rees-Mogg.
Mr Johnson said last week: ‘It would be perfectly OK if we weren’t able to get an [EU trade] agreement but I’m sure that we will.’
Sir John’s rebuke for those Conservatives who say, ‘There is no prospect of a second Scottish referendum,’ as a result of Brexit seems to be at Mr Gove, who has said precisely that.
Sir John says he is confident Theresa May will approach the Brexit talks with ‘skill, persuasion and diplomacy’ and he urges other MPs to ‘follow her example’, adding that ‘only then will we start to heal the wounds that have been inflicted by this divisive debate’.
Mr Rees-Mogg and Mr Dun- can Smith appear to be the target of his denunciation of Brexiteer MPs who use ‘lowgrade personal abuse’. Mr Rees-Mogg has dismissed Sir John’s anti-Brexit views as ‘the bitter ramblings of a vengeful man’. And long-time foe Mr Duncan Smith has called the former PM’s anti-Brexit comments ‘an absolute dismissal of democracy’.
Sir John, who campaigned for Britain to stay in the EU, says: ‘The 48 per cent who voted Remain have as big a stake in our future as the 52 per cent who voted Leave.’
He says they have a right to express their views and that ‘no one should be silenced’.
He adds it is time for ‘Ultra Brexiteers’ to ‘stop shouting down anyone with an opposing view’, describing the tactic as ‘unattractive’, ‘undemocratic’ and ‘un-British’.
‘Undemocratic and un-British’