U.K.’s Johnson quits, rattling government
Prime minister May tries to calm fears 9 months out.
The foreign secretary accused Prime Minister Theresa May of surrendering to the European Union and giving up on Brexit.
British Prime MinLONDON— ister Theresa May dug in her heels Monday after the resignation of two top government ministers over Brexit negotiations whipped up a storm that threatened to topple her fragile minority government
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson quit with a resignation letter accusing May of flying “white flags” of surrender in negotiations with the European Union. He said “the Brexit dream is dying, suffocated by needless self doubt.”
Johnson followed Brexit Secretary David Davis out the door as a hard-won government consensus on future trade ties with the bloc disintegrated less than three days after it was forged, and nine months before Britain is due to leave the EU.
Davis resigned late Sunday, saying May’s plan to maintain close trade and regulatory ties with the EU gave “too much away, too easily.”
If Davis’s resignation rattled May, Johnson’s shook the foundations of her government. The tousle-headed blond Johnson is one of Britain’s best-known politicians, and one of the most prominent advocates for Brexit. Some euroskeptic lawmakers dream of replacing May with a staunch Brexiteer such as Johnson, a populist, polarizing figure who has never made a secret of his ambition to be prime minister.
“It is as though we are sending our vanguard into battle with the white flags fluttering above them,” Johnson wrote in a letter that underscored his credentials as a champion of full-speed Brexit.
“The government now has a song to sing,” he said. “The trouble is that I have practiced the words over the weekend and find that they stick in the throat.”
With Britain due to leave the 28-nation bloc on March 29, 2019, EU officials have warned Britain repeatedly that time is running out to seal a deal spelling out the terms of the divorce and a post-split relationship.
May met with Conservative lawmakers in a packed room at Parliament, in a bid to calm the feverish atmosphere in the deeply divided party.
Under Conservative Party rules, a confidence vote in a leader can be triggered if 48 Conservative lawmakers write a letter requesting one. But leading pro-Brexit lawmaker Jacob Rees-Mogg said he didn’t think she would face a leadership challenge.
“My concern is about the policy rather than the individual,” he said.
Earlier, May defended her Brexit plan to l awmakers in the House of Commons, with Johnson absent from his usual place on the Conservative front bench.
She said she and the two departed ministers “do not agree about the best way of delivering our shared commitment to honoring the result of the referendum” in which U.K. voters opted to leave the EU.
May’s plan seeks to keep the U.K. and the EU in a freetrade zone for goods, and commits Britain to maintaining the same rules as the bloc for goods and agricultural products.
May said the plan would deliver frictionless trade with Europe and was the “only way to avoid a hard border” between the U.K.’s Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland. Britain and the EU agree there must be border infrastructure or checks along the currently invisible frontier, but working out how to achieve that has been a major stumbling block i n negotiations.
Rebuffing claims that her proposals make too many concessions to the EU, May said her “smooth and orderly Brexit” would leave Britain free to make its own laws and trade deals.
The resignations came just days after May announced Friday that she had finally united her quarrelsome government behind a plan for a divorce deal with the EU.