Minister quits with warning over ‘Brexit dark cloud’
ONE of Boris Johnson’s fiercest critics quit the Government today warning how the “dark cloud of Brexit” is harming Britain.
Sir Alan Duncan resigned as Foreign Office minister just hours before the polls closed to elect the new Tory leader, who is widely expected to be Mr Johnson.
Sir Alan’s departure is the first of a string of ministers who will stand down before Mr Johnson becomes prime minister on Wednesday afternoon, unless there is a shock upset and his rival Jeremy Hunt gains the keys to No 10.
Chancellor Philip Hammond and Justice Secretary David Gauke have already confirmed they will go rather than be sacked by Mr Johnson, who has said all his Cabinet must be prepared for Britain to leave the EU by October 31, with or without a deal.
In his resignation letter, Sir Alan wrote: “The UK does so much good in the world. It is tragic that just
when we could have been the dominant intellectual and political force throughout Europe, and beyond, we have had to spend every day working beneath the dark cloud of Brexit.”
He praised Theresa May for her “faultless dignity” and an “unstinting sense of duty”.
He also told how he was “deeply upset” that attempts to secure the release of London mother Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe from prison in Iran, where she has been wrongly accused of spying, had been “brought to such an abrupt halt”.
Sir Alan has repeatedly criticised Mr Johnson, often in colourful terms.
Earlier this month he accused the former foreign secretary of having thrown former British ambassador to the US Sir Kim Darroch “under the bus” by not giving him firm enough backing following the leak of diplomatic cables in which Sir Kim described the Trump administration as “inept”.
In June Sir Alan described Mr Johnson as a “circus act” and last year he vowed to end his political career over his comparison of Mrs May’s Brexit deal to a “suicide vest”. His resignation came after Mr Johnson restated his firm intention to get the UK out of the European Union by the end of October, claiming a deal with Brussels could be reached if the country has the “will” and the “drive”.
The former London mayor said that if it was possible to get to the moon and back 50 years ago then the problem of frictionless trade on the Irish border cou ld be solved.
“If they could use hand-knitted computer code to make a frictionless re-entry to Earth’s atmosphere in 1969, we can solve the problem of frictionless trade at the Northern Irish border,” he wrote in his Daily Telegraph column today. “It is time this country recovered some of its can-do spirit. We can come out of the EU on October 31, and yes, we certainly have the technology to do so.”
Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP’s chief whip, believes technology can play a part in resolving the row over the Northern Ireland border “backstop”, one of the key reasons why Mrs May failed three times to get her Brexit plans through the Commons.
However, he questioned whether this could be done by October 31. “I don’t know whether there will be enough time between now and the deadline in October to get agreement with the EU on what that technology would look l i k e ,” h e told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.