Brexiteer heavyweight Boris Johnson has slammed the Government’s lack of “gumption”, accusing it of having “chickened out” on Brexit and urging the prime minister to “channel the spirit of Moses in Exodus, and say to Pharaoh in Brussels – LET MY PEOPLE GO.”
Writing in The Telegraph, the colourful Tory MP and former Vote Leave frontman lamented that he had “imagined that the Government would be sufficiently full of gumption to make a success of our departure, whatever happened, and that we would show the confidence commensurate with one of the greatest economies on earth.”
“I am afraid I misread the Government.”
Johnson, who himself resigned from the Government over Mrs May’s so-called “Chequers plan” for the Brexit negotiations — which ultimately produced the current Withdrawal Agreement with the EU and its contentious backstop, now twice-rejected by the House of Commons — reminded readers that “For almost three years every Tory MP has chirruped the mantra that no deal would be better than a bad deal.”
“That assertion was repeated in the Tory manifesto. I believed that the Government was sincere in making that claim, and I believed that the PM genuinely had the 29th of March inscribed in her heart. She repeated her commitment to coming out – deal or no deal – so often that I trustingly assumed that she meant it,” he added ruefully.
Indeed, the prime minister promised to honour the March 29th exit date at least 108 times from the despatch box of the House of Commons — but ended up asking the EU for an extension anyway, despite the great majority of her own MPs and the allied Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) voting against a delay.
Johnson indicated his regret that his expectation that, if her deal could not pass, the Prime Minister “would simply enact the mandate of both parliament and people” and leave the EU with no deal, had turned out to be false.
“We have blinked. We have baulked. We have bottled it completely. We have now undergone the humiliation of allowing the EU to decide the date on which we may make our own departure. It is the EU that is now insisting that parliament must vote – for a third time! – on its Carthaginian terms,” he railed, being at pains to recount all the reasons Mrs May’s deal is unacceptable.
He indicated, however, that he would nevertheless be willing to support it — provided the hated backstop, widely regarded as undermining the United Kingdom’s territorial integrity by allowing the EU to annex the Province of Northern Ireland for customs purposes — in hopes the so-called “transition period” it entails could be used to hammer out a more desirable UK-EU trade agreement.
“There is only one plausible argument why we should now vote it through – and that is that every other option is now worse,” he observed.
On Monday night the House of Commons will hold “indicative votes” on how to proceed with Brexit — leaving the EU with no deal, negotiating an even weaker form of Brexit than the one envisioned in Mrs May’s deal, holding a second referendum, and more.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.