I’D RATHER BE DEAD IN A DITCH THAN DELAY BREXIT
PM still talks tough despite shock of MP brother quitting Government
BORIS Johnson last night declared that he would rather “be dead in a ditch” than beg the EU for another Brexit delay.
In a defiant blast, the Prime Minister insisted that he would not allow MPs to force him to go to Brussels to postpone the UK’s departure from the bloc in spite of a string of bruising Commons defeats of his
negotiation strategies. He also intensified the pressure on Jeremy Corbyn to stop blocking an election so the people could have a “choice” on the country’s destiny.
But the Prime Minister had to face uncomfortable questions about his brother Jo Johnson’s resignation as a minister, saying he was “torn between family loyalty and the national interest.
Praising his brother as a “fantastic guy” and a “brilliant minister”, he admitted his brother did not agree with him about the EU.
Mr Johnson delivered his uncompromising vow at an event in West Yorkshire intended to kick off the snap poll that the Labour leader vetoed in a crunch Commons vote on Wednesday.
Ministers last night tabled a fresh parliamentary motion to trigger another vote on Monday to overturn the decision.
But Labour was threatening to continue blocking the election call in the hope that Parliament will force him to request stalling the EU’s Article 50 departure process. Asked during his visit to a police training college in Wakefield if he could make a promise to voters not to return to Brussels to ask for a further Brexit delay, the Prime Minister said: “Yes, I can. I would rather be dead in a ditch.”
He declined to say whether he would resign rather than request a delay.
Instead, he said: “It costs a billion pounds a month, it achieves absolutely nothing.
“What on Earth is the point of further delay? I think it’s totally, totally pointless.”
Mr Johnson promised to “make sure that we don’t have that unnecessary delay” to Brexit.
He said: “I’m going to do everything I possibly can to make sure this country comes out of the EU on October 31.
“But unfortunately Parliament voted yesterday effectively to scupper our negotiating power and to make it much more difficult for this Government to get a deal.
“So what I want to do now is to really give the country a choice: we either go forward with our plan to get a deal, take the country out on October 31 which we can or else somebody else should be allowed to see if they can keep us in beyond October 31,” he said.
Mr Johnson insisted he could not see any other way to break the parliamentary deadlock other than a general election.
“I hate banging on about Brexit. I don’t want to go about this any more,” he said.
“I don’t want an election at all, but frankly I cannot see any other way.
“The only way to get this thing done, to get this thing moving, is to make that decision. Do you want this Government to take us out on October 31? Or do you want Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour party to go to that crucial summit in Brussels on October 17, effectively hand over control to the EU and keep us in beyond October 31?
“I think it’s a no-brainer and I’m sorry to bring this painful subject up but that’s the reality of what we face and for me there can only be one way forward for our country.”
He accused Parliament of having wrecked the UK’s negotiating position with the EU by working to prevent a no-deal.
He added: “I really don’t see how we can have a situation where the British ability to negotiate is absolutely torpedoed by Parliament in this way with powers of the British people handed over to Brussels so we can be kept incarcerated in the EU without that actually being put to the people in the form of a vote.”
Tory aides insisted Mr Corbyn will come under intensifying pressure from voters in the coming days to drop his refusal to allow the election that he has been demanding for the last two years.
One senior source said: “For Jeremy Corbyn to continue to avoid an election would be a cowardly insult to democracy.”
An opinion poll last night showed 43 per cent of voters thought Mr Corbyn taking over in Downing Street would be the worst possible outcome of the Brexit negotiations. Forty-six per cent of those quizzed for the PoliticoHanbury survey wanted a general election while 36 per cent did not.
Mr Johnson will tonight make the traditional prime ministerial trip to the Queen’s Balmoral estate.
But the visit will be shorter than expected due to the political turmoil in Westminster.
The Prime Minister will stay at the castle in Aberdeenshire on Friday night before returning to London on Saturday.
His girlfriend Carrie Symonds is expected to join him for the stay with the Queen.
FOR Boris Johnson the news just gets worse, culminating yesterday with the humiliation of his own brother’s resignation as a minister and Conservative MP. He may end up going down as Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister.
Those in the anti no-deal lobby have their tails up. It is they, not our Prime Minister, who are in control of events. They, with the eager assistance of the less-than-independent Speaker, John Bercow, seem to be able to dictate what is debated and voted upon in the Commons. With the Prime Minister having reduced his own majority to minus 43, by removing the whip from 21 of his own rebel MPs, they can be sure of defeating the Government every time.
We effectively have something unprecedented: an informal, cross-party government. This anti no-deal coalition should beware, however. I fear, for its own sake, that it may be drunk on the new-found sense of camaraderie among Tory rebels and opposition parties and fail to appreciate how out of tune it is with the country.
It is all very well delighting in the raw sense of power which comes from blocking the avowed policy of a sitting prime minister. But what these MPs have failed to do is to tell us what they would like instead of a no-deal Brexit on October 31.
DO THEY want to reverse Article 50 and keep Britain in the EU indefinitely? Do they want some other kind of Brexit? A Norway-style arrangement? A tweaked version of Mrs May’s deal? They cannot tell us because they cannot agree.
The House of Commons is no closer to settling on a vision for Brexit – or no Brexit – than it was in March when it briefly succeeded in seizing control of Parliament from Mrs May’s government. The Commons voted on eight alternative ways forward, from reversing the
enactment of Article 50, to holding a second referendum to a Norway-style deal. And it rejected every single one.
The series of “indicative votes” had been made out to be a case of responsible adults taking over from a squabbling government. Instead, it was a pathetic spectacle.
It certainly doesn’t impress the public. We saw what happened after the Commons forced Theresa May to go to Brussels to seek an extension to Britain’s original leaving date of March 29.A new political party, the Brexit Party, bubbled up from nowhere with one clear policy – enacting the instructions the British people gave in the 2016 referendum – and triumphed in the European Parliament elections. The anti no-deal lobby has a fantasy that millions of Britons regret having voted Leave three years ago and are looking to their elected parliamentary representatives to reverse the result. But it isn’t true, as we would find out if we had a general election.
But we can’t have one for the moment because the Commons can’t agree on that, either. Given the opportunity on Wednesday to fight an election, Jeremy Corbyn inexplicably instructed his MPs to abstain – in spite of having spent every waking hour calling for one for months. I say inexplicably, but there is perfect logic behind Corbyn’s sudden opposition to an election. Labour is trailing at 22 per cent in the polls – an astonishing position for a main opposition party to be in when the governing party is disintegrating before our eyes.
Labour is in this position because by siding too close to the Remain side of the Brexit argument, it has lost the ambiguity that allowed it in the 2017 election to convince both Leave and Remain voters that it was on its side. Secondly, people can see that Corbyn and his shadow chancellor John McDonnell are unreformed Marxists who would jack up taxes and crash the economy.
JUST this week McDonnell threatened to seize properties owned by buy-to-let investors and sell them at a discount to their tenants. He promised to seize 10 per cent of the shares of private companies and put them into a fund for the benefit of the workers. He has threatened a wealth tax – he even talked once of seizing 20 per cent of the assets of the richest 10 per cent of the population.
As the polls indicate, Britain is not going to vote for an extreme Left-wing programme – which is why we are caught in this wretched stalemate, unable to leave the EU but unable to have a general election either.
Somehow, all these MPs are going to have to stop simply throwing bricks and find a way to break the impasse. A general election is the obvious route, if Labour MPs can bring themselves to defy Jeremy Corbyn just as Conservative ones did Boris Johnson.