May’s Brexit plan ‘miserable’ – Boris
BORIS Johnson has issued a call for Theresa May to tear up her “miserable” plans for close relations with the European Union after Brexit and return to the “glorious vision” of Global Britain which she set out last year.
In a highly-charged personal statement to the House of Commons following his resignation as foreign secretary, Mr Johnson did not make a direct challenge to Mrs May’s position as Prime Minister and Conservative leader.
But he denounced the plan agreed at Chequers and set out in the PM’s white paper last week as a “Brexit in name only” which would leave the UK in a state of “vassalage”.
And he left no doubt of his intention to put himself at the head of Tory backbench forces demanding a return to Mrs May’s original red lines of total withdrawal from the customs union and single market in order to allow Britain the unfettered ability to forge trade deals around the world.
Accusing the Government of “dithering” over its Brexit negotiations, he said that a “fog of self-doubt” had descended on Mrs May’s stance to EU withdrawal since she
first set it out in a speech at Lancaster House in London last year.
In a 12-minute statement, he said: “It is not too late to save Brexit. We have time in these negotiations.
“We have changed tack once and we can change again.
“The problem is not that we have failed to make the case for a free trade agreement of the kind spelt out at Lancaster House. We haven’t even tried.
“We must try now because we will not get another chance to do it right.”
Mrs May was not present to hear Mr Johnson’s statement, as she was answering questions on Brexit from senior MPs at a long-planned hearing of the House of Commons Liaison Committee. The Uxbridge MP made a point of praising “her courage and her resilience” and indicated that he thought she could lead the UK to a successful Brexit if Mrs May was willing to change tack.
But he was scathing about the Government’s handling of negotiations with Europe so far.
He said he could “neither support nor accept” the Brexit vision that he and other Cabinet members signed up to at Chequers.
“Let us again aim explicitly for that glorious vision of Lancaster House – a strong, independent self-governing Britain that is genuinely open to the world, not the miserable permanent limbo of Chequers,” said Mr Johnson.
“Not the democratic disaster of ongoing harmonisation with no way out and no say for the UK.
“We need to take one decision now before all others and that is to believe in this country and what it can do.”
Mr Johnson warned that under Mrs May’s proposals, the UK was “volunteering for economic vassalage”.