DASH TO SEAL BREXIT DEAL
Alarm over plot to scupper our EU departure
DAVID Cameron was last night under pressure to speed up his departure from Downing Street as concerns grew that a stitch-up is being plotted to scupper Britain’s exit from the EU.
As the Prime Minister prepared to announce the next steps in the Brexit process today, senior MPs including Cabinet ministers said a successor dedicated to severing Britain’s ties with Brussels must be appointed as soon as possible.
Former work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith, a leading Leave campaigner, led calls for the next prime minister to be a confirmed “Brexiteer”. Former London mayor Boris Johnson, who remains the firm favourite to take
over, spent yesterday with supportive Tory MPs at his Oxfordshire home as he prepares to launch a leadership bid.
Mr Duncan Smith said: “It would be very difficult for the public, who have voted for leaving the EU, to then find they had a prime minister actually opposed to leaving.”
Other MPs said Mr Cameron and his discredited chancellor George Osborne needed to stand aside as soon as possible.
One senior backbencher said: “Cameron and Osborne are like a couple of snake oil salesmen who need to get out of town now their ruse has been rumbled.”
Alarm bells rang when a string of senior political figures suggested Britain could have a rethink over the result of the referendum.
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon suggested her government could veto a Brexit by attempting to withhold “legislative consent”.
Former Labour prime minister Tony Blair speculated that a second referendum could be held. “Why rule anything out right now?” he said.
And an official in German chancellor Angela Merkel’s government said the UK should “reconsider” the result. Her chief of staff Peter Altmaier said: “Politicians in London should have the possibility to reconsider the consequences of an exit.”
He said a UK withdrawal would be “a difficult watershed with many consequences”, before adding that Britain could rejoin at a later date “but that would take a long time”.
Speculation about Britain’s future grew yesterday as Westminster remained engulfed in the extraordinary political crisis sparked by the referendum result and Mr Cameron’s resignation. The Prime Minister, who has pledged to stand down within three months, will hold a Cabinet meeting today before making a Commons statement to MPs to set out the next steps for the country’s future.
A Downing Street spokesman said: “There will be discussions about the administrative process needed to move forward at Cabinet. However, decisions around Article 50 (formally applying to the EU for an exit) are a matter for the next prime minister.”
Mr Duncan Smith yesterday insisted there could be no backtracking on a referendum.
“There was a clear decision, and what has to happen is delivery on that,” he told The Andrew Marr Show on BBC One.
Tory backbencher Peter Bone, a leading Brexit campaigner, added: “That is not how we do democracy in the United Kingdom – although it may be how they do it in the EU.”
Meanwhile, former Cabinet minister Liam Fox did not rule himself out of the race to be the next prime minister. He also warned against a hasty departure and being forced to accept an unfavourable exit deal. He said leaving the EU on January 1, 2019, was “a reasonable timetable”.