TORY RUSH TO HARD BREXIT
Leadership rivals open to No Deal but Hunt warns it will be ‘suicide’
TORY leadership candidates yesterday charged towards backing a No Deal Brexit as the party hit the panic button following its drubbing at the hands of Nigel Farage.
Rival contenders lined up to pledge they would finally take the country out of the European Union after the Tories suffered their worst election result in 200 years.
Boris Johnson, the favourite to succeed Theresa May, tweeted: ‘ The message is clear. It is time for us to deliver Brexit and set out our positive plans for the country.’
Esther McVey declared it was no longer possible to find a Brexit plan ‘to bring people together’ as she argued that leaving without a deal is the only thing that ‘will wash now’.
However, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt last night warned the Tories would be committing ‘political suicide’ by attempting to push through a No Deal Brexit.
In a veiled rebuke to No Deal advocates Mr Johnson, Miss McVey and Dominic Raab, Mr Hunt warned they risk the ‘extinction’ of the Conservative Party.
Writing for The Daily Telegraph, he said any Prime Minister who tries to crash Britain out of the EU would risk the ‘first Marxist prime minister’ being in Downing Street by Christmas by offering ‘a prospectus of disaster’.
Mr Hunt added: ‘The results contain a simple message which we ignore at our peril: if we attempt a general election before we have delivered Brexit we will be annihilated,’ he said.
Other contenders lined up to pledge to get Britain out of the EU by October. Mr Raab said the country must show ‘unflinching resolve’, while Michael Gove said the party ‘ absolutely needs to deliver Brexit’.
Sajid Javid, who entered the race yesterday, said getting the country out of the EU would be his ‘first and foremost’ priority.
In an article for the Daily Mail today, Matt Hancock declares it is ‘mission critical’ that the Tories secure Brexit before the next general election.
But he warns the party will not return to power with a majority again if it fails to stop haemorrhaging votes to both the Brexit Party, but also the Liberal Democrats.
He wrote: ‘We’ve lost many longstanding voters to the Brexit Party. Not because of any details of the deal we proposed – but simply because we haven’t delivered Brexit yet.’ But Mr Hancock, who is currently Health Secretary, said the party risked losing seats it had won from the Lib Dems in places such as the South West if it failed to ‘hold our nerve’ and pursued a No Deal Brexit instead.
‘ Tory voters who supported Remain and younger voters who share our values are being hoovered up by the Lib Dems in growing numbers,’ he wrote.
‘This strikes at the heart of our ability to win general elections at all. A Lib Dem revival threatens dozens of Conservative seats in England, opening up a pathway to power for Jeremy Corbyn. There was a 14 per cent national swing from the Conservatives to the Lib Dems in these elections.
‘A similar swing at a general election held before we leave the EU could lose us 17 of the seats we won from them in 2015.’ David Cameron won a majority two years ago after the Tories took 27 seats from its former Coalition partners.
The European Parliament election results saw the Tories slump to fifth place with just four MEPs.
Mr Gove, the Environment Secretary, said Tories needed to ‘honour the referendum mandate before there is an election, because if we don’t Corbyn will be in Downing Street propped up by the SNP’.
Miss McVey, former work and pensions secretary, took the most hardline position by suggesting she would not even attempt to renegotiate the Brexit deal with Brussels. She said: ‘We must leave the EU on October 31 with a clean break, nothing else will wash now.
‘People saying we need a Brexit policy to bring people together are misreading the situation. That is clearly not possible.’
Former Brexit secretary Mr Raab said: ‘Voters have sent us a very clear message: unless we get on and actually leave the EU they will rightly kick us out at the next election.’
He said he would hold a Brexit budget before October 31 to show
‘Hoovered up by the Lib Dems’ Do I turn right now, darling, or aim for the middle of the road?
Britain was serious about a No Deal departure, calling for the country to ‘demonstrate unflinching resolve’.
He added: ‘We will not be taken seriously in Brussels unless we are clear that we will walk away on World Trade Organisation (WTO) terms if the EU doesn’t budge.
‘To demonstrate our determination I would bring forward a Brexit Budget.
‘If we are forced … to leave on WTO terms, we will be able to draw from the £39billion budgeted … to help ease the transition.’ Fellow hopeful Andrea Leadsom added: ‘These results are truly terrible and demonstrate the damage that has been done to the Conservative Party, and to the country, in not leaving the European Union.’
A poll of 10,000 by Lord Ashcroft yesterday found that 53 per cent of those who voted Conservative in 2017 switched to the Brexit Party on Thursday, with 12 per cent going to the Lib Dems and only 21 per cent staying with the party.