-Hard Brexiteers are back in the spotlight
Downing Street hit back at the former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson on Monday claiming he offered nothing new after he said the U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit plan, that was drafted at her summer residence, Chequers, would lead to “inevitable victory” for the EU, according to The Times newspaper. Johnson calls for a Brexit deal with the EU comprising a “big and generous” free trade deal with “intimate partnerships” on foreign policy, justice and other areas of co-operation.
“In adopting the Chequers proposals, we have gone into battle with the white flag fluttering over our leading tank. If we continue on this basis we will throw away most of the advantages of Brexit,” he wrote in his column in the Daily Telegraph newspaper on Monday.
“People can see Chequers means disaster,” he said.
A recent report claims that nearly 20 MP’s are preparing to wreck May’s EU exit plan. With this news, the pound was under renewed pressure on Monday morning. It appears that Johnson has been catapulted back into the spotlight, which he seems to crave, as the leader of the revolt against May’s plan in the Conservative Party. Nonetheless, the hard Brexiters do not appear to be united in support of Johnson.
Asked if it would be better if May stood down, the former Brexit secretary David Davis said: “No, we don’t need any more turbulence right now. What matters in all of this is not the personality politics, it’s the outcome at the end.”
Speaking earlier on Monday, Damian Green, the prime minister’s former deputy, who is critical of a hard Brexit position, said “high-stakes rhetoric, use of words like ‘surrender’ and ‘white flag’ and ‘treachery’ and so on, that some newspapers have used, are absolutely what we don’t need in the current circumstance.”
According to an interview with German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on Sunday, the EU's Chief Negotiator, Michel Barnier, also said that accepting May's Brexit proposals would spell the 'end' for the European Project.
It now looks as if May will have to deal with a potential revolt in her party while also trying to convince Brussels of her Brexit plan.