No-deal Brexit is ‘political suicide’

THE UK’s Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said on Tuesday that Britain’s governing Conservative Party would be committing “political suicide” if it tries to force through a no-deal Brexit.

Hunt, who is among the 10 candidates vying to replace the outgoing Theresa May as Britain’s prime minister, said trying to take the UK out of the EU without a deal would trigger a general election in which the Conservatives risked being “annihilated”.

He said the centre-right party would face an existential threat, with voters who supported staying in the EU defecting to the pro-EU Liberal Demo c r a t s a n d t h o s e who supported leaving the EU heading to the Brexit Party.

The newly-formed Brexit Party led by Nigel Farage topped last week’s European Parliament elections.

“The results contain a simple message which we ignore at our peril: if we attempt a general election before we have delivered Brexit we will be annihilated,” Hunt wrote in the Daily Telegraph newspaper.

“Attacked by the Brexit Party on the right and the Liberal Democrats on the left, we will face extinction. Any candidate for prime minister whose strategy leads inexorably to a general election is offering a prospectus for disaster.”

Hunt said any prime minister who promised to leave the EU by a specific date, without t he t ime to renegot iate a nd pass a new deal, would effectively be committing to a genera l election because parliament would bring down the government.

“Trying to deliver no deal through a general election is not a solution. It is political suicide,” he wrote.

Rival leadership candidates, including former foreign secretar y Boris Johnson and f o r mer Bre x i t s e c r e t a r y Dominic Raab, have said Britain must be prepared to leave the EU without a deal.

May will step down as Conservative leader on June 7 and stay on as prime minister until her successor is chosen.

Housing minister Kit Malthouse is the latest contender to enter the leadership race.

He headed up the so-called Malthouse Compromise – a plan drawn up by pro- and anti-Brexit Conservative MPs intended to find a way through the impasse and get a divorce deal with Brussels.

“We need to end the Brexit paralysis, and while I voted to leave the EU, I know that without unity across the UK, we cannot get a deal over the line,” he wrote in the Sun.