LONDON: Brexit campaigner Boris Johnson called on Prime Minister Theresa May to rip up her proposal for Britain’s exit from the European Union, ratcheting up the pressure on May as she prepares to face her divided party at its annual conference next week.
Just six months before Britain is due to leave the European Union on March 29, 2019, little is clear: May has yet to clinch a Brexit divorce deal with the EU and rebels in her party have threatened to vote down any deal she makes.
Adding to the uncertainty, a poll of polls published on Friday showed voters would now vote 52 to 48 per cent in favour of remaining in the EU were there to be another Brexit referendum. May has repeatedly ruled out another referendum.
Johnson, the bookmakers’ favourite to succeed May, said her Brexit plans would leave the United Kingdom half in and half out of the club it joined in 1973 and in effective “enforced vassalage”.
“This is the moment to change the course of the negotiations and do justice to the ambitions and potential of Brexit,” Johnson, who resigned in July as foreign secretary over May’s Brexit proposals, wrote in Friday’s Daily Telegraph.
Under the headline, “My plan for a better Brexit”, Johnson, called for a “SuperCanada-type free trade agreement”. He said the EU’s “backstop” proposals for Northern Ireland, under which the British-ruled province would remain within the EU customs union even if the rest of Britain left, amounted to the economic annexation of part of the United Kingdom.
The plan outlined by Johnson gained support from other rebels such as Conservative lawmaker Jacob Rees-Mogg who are pushing for a deeper break with the EU.
— Reuters
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