Chances of no Brexit at all rising, warns UK foreign secretary
LONDON: Given the latest arithmetic in the House of Commons and the Theresa May government suffering setbacks this week, the chances of Brexit not happening at all are rising, British foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt warned on Friday.
If May’s withdrawal agreement is voted down in Parliament on Tuesday, the British prime minister has said that the UK will move into “uncharted territory”.
MPS have used Parliamentary devices to dig into the Brexit process and curb the May government’s powers.
As the Brexit debate continued in Parliament on Friday, in an unprecedented step, former MI6 chef Richard Dearlove and former chief of defence staff Charles Guthrie wrote to the Conservative Party, calling the agreement a “bad” one for national security and urged its MPS not to vote for it.
Hunt, whose comments on BBC radio were interpreted as trying to scare rebel Conservative MPS from voting against the agreement, said if Brexit didn’t happen on March 29, it would have serious implications for the people’s trust in politics.
Hunt said, “The Parliamentary arithmetic is challenging. But also, the choices are very clear. I think after this week, things have changed. Up till now, people have quite rightly been worrying about the prospects of a no-deal. Now, there is another possibility coming into sight, which is actually no-brexit.”
“And why is that? We have a government that is committed to delivering Brexit, but it doesn’t have a majority. If this deal is rejected, ultimately what we may end up with is not a different type of Brexit, but Brexit paralysis. And Brexit paralysis ultimately could lead to no-brexit,” he said.
A no-brexit situation, according to him, would be “an incredibly damaging breach of trust”.