Won’t renegotiate Brexit: Macron tells UK

PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron has said a no-deal Brexit would be of Britain’s own making and not the European Union’s, adding that any trade pact London cut with Washington would not mitigate the cost of leaving the bloc without a deal.

The French leader said the demands made by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson for a renegotiation of the divorce deal, including the removal of the Irish backstop, were not workable.

He spoke to reporters in Paris as German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin gave Johnson 30 days to draw up an alternative solution to the backstop, an insurance policy to prevent the return of a hard border between Britain’s province of Northern Ireland and EU-member Ireland.

“Can the cost for Britain of a hard Brexit - because Britain will be the main victim - be offset by the United States of America? No. And even if it were a strategic choice it would be at the cost of a historic vassalisation of Britain,” he said.

“I don’t think this is what Boris Johnson wants. I don’t think it is what the British people want.”

Earlier on Wednesday, an official in Macron’s office said France now saw a no-deal as the most likely scenario come Britain’s October 31 deadline and that there was not a “cigarette paper” standing between the positions of France, Germany and other EU states.

“The British are attached to being a great power, a member of the Security Council. The point can’t be to exit Europe and say ‘we’ll be stronger’, before in the end, becoming the junior partner of the United States, which are acting more and more hegemonically,” Macron added.

Macron said he saw no reason to grant a further delay to Brexit unless there was a significant political change in Britain, such as an election or a new referendum. French officials say if Britain requested an extension in order to hold a new election, the EU would probably grant it.