Brexit not about personality politics, Tories warn Johnson

Boris Johnson has faced immediate pushback from former cabinet colleagues for his attack on Theresa May’s latest Brexit plan, with David Davis saying it it not the time for “personality politics”.

4 September 2018

© Composite: Daniel Leal-Olivas/PA/AFP/Getty Images/Reuters David Davis and
Boris Johnson both resigned from their cabinet roles over the Chequers plan.

Damian Green, the prime minister’s former deputy and a close ally of May on the backbenches, also condemned hard-Brexit supporters, such as Johnson, for having no workable plan of their own.

Johnson, who resigned as foreign secretary over the Chequers plan, used a column in the Telegraph to argue that May’s Brexit proposals meant she was entering negotiations with a “white flag fluttering”.

The article, immediately billed by many as a renewed push for May’s job, saw Johnson accuse some members of the government of deliberately using the Irish border situation to “stop a proper Brexit”.

The main problem on Brexit, Johnson said, was “not that we have failed, but that we have not even tried”. 

Speaking on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, however, Davis seemed to attack Johnson’s agenda. Asked if it would be better if May stood down, the former Brexit secretary 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.”

© PA File photo of Theresa May and Boris Johnson

Speaking earlier on Monday, Green told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “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.

“What’s interesting now is that the only plan on the table is the British government’s plan. [The EU’s chief negotiator] Michel Barnier hasn’t got a plan, those in my own party who object to Chequers don’t have a plan. So let’s hear what other people have.”

Green conceded that May faced “a narrow path” to get her plan agreed by MPs. “But it is absolutely certain that there is no parliamentary majority in the House of Commons for a hard Brexit. So I’ll be interested to see what those who are saying, ‘Chequers isn’t good enough, we need a much harder Brexit’, what do they propose to get through the House of Commons?”

MPs return to the Commons from their summer recess on Tuesday, amid growing party disquiet over the direction of the divorce talks.

Johnson wrote: “The reality is that in this negotiation the EU has so far taken every important trick. The UK has agreed to hand over £40bn of taxpayers’ money for two thirds of diddly squat.”

He said that by adopting the Chequers plan, in which the UK would adopt a common rule book for the trade of food and goods, “we have gone into battle with the white flag fluttering over our leading tank”.

It would be “impossible for the UK to be more competitive, to innovate, to deviate, to initiate, and we are ruling out major free trade deals.”

This week will be the first chance for Conservative MPs to compare notes about the state of grassroots feeling over Brexit since before the recess. Many ordinary party members are unhappy with the Chequers plan, fearing it amounts to a loss of sovereignty.

Johnson called on May to return to the argument of her Lancaster House speech of January 2017. He said that under the current plan, “we will remain in the EU taxi; but this time locked in the boot, with absolutely no say on the destination. We won’t have taken back control – we will have lost control.”

A group of Tory MPs is set on halting the Chequers plan. The 20 backbench rebels, including former ministers Priti Patel and Iain Duncan Smith, have joined the StandUp4Brexit group, a grassroots campaign that has vowed to tear up the EU negotiations to date.

On Sunday, Davis had criticised May for admitting she would have to make compromises to the EU beyond the Chequers agreement in order to reach a deal. The former Brexit secretary told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show that he could not vote for what had been proposed because it was worse than staying in.

Davis, who also resigned because he said he could not endorse the Chequers deal, was speaking after the prime minister had said in a Sunday newspaper column that she would “not be pushed into accepting compromises” on the Chequers plan that are “not in our national interest”.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/brexit/brexit-not-about-personality-politics-tories-warn-johnson