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You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/sep/03/we-have-gone-into-battle-with-white-flag-fluttering-boris-attacks-mays-chequers-plan
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| 'Impossible': Johnson launches fresh attack on May's Brexit plans | 'Impossible': Johnson launches fresh attack on May's Brexit plans |
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| Boris Johnson has used his first newspaper column of the new parliamentary term to attack Theresa May’s Chequers plan, saying it means the UK enters Brexit negotiations with a “white flag fluttering”.The declaration amounts to a significant escalation of the former foreign secretary’s guerrilla campaign against the prime minister and her Chequers plan a day before the Commons returns and at a time when party disquiet over the direction of the divorce talks is mounting.Johnson wrote that “the reality is that in this negotiation the EU has so far taken every important trick. The UK has agreed to hand over £40 billion of taxpayers’ money for two thirds of diddly squat”.Johnson added that by adopting the Chequers plan, in which the UK would adopt a common rulebook for food and goods, “we have gone into battle with the white flag fluttering over our leading tank”. It will be “impossible for the UK to be more competitive, to innovate, to deviate, to initiate, and we are ruling out major free trade deals,” he added. | Boris Johnson has used his first newspaper column of the new parliamentary term to attack Theresa May’s Chequers plan, saying it means the UK enters Brexit negotiations with a “white flag fluttering”.The declaration amounts to a significant escalation of the former foreign secretary’s guerrilla campaign against the prime minister and her Chequers plan a day before the Commons returns and at a time when party disquiet over the direction of the divorce talks is mounting.Johnson wrote that “the reality is that in this negotiation the EU has so far taken every important trick. The UK has agreed to hand over £40 billion of taxpayers’ money for two thirds of diddly squat”.Johnson added that by adopting the Chequers plan, in which the UK would adopt a common rulebook for food and goods, “we have gone into battle with the white flag fluttering over our leading tank”. It will be “impossible for the UK to be more competitive, to innovate, to deviate, to initiate, and we are ruling out major free trade deals,” he added. |
| The intervention comes after a summer in which the former foreign secretary, who resigned over the Chequers deal, had avoided touching on Brexit in his Daily Telegraph column – although he did unleash a storm of complaint by describing fully veiled Muslim women as looking like letter boxes and bank robbers. | The intervention comes after a summer in which the former foreign secretary, who resigned over the Chequers deal, had avoided touching on Brexit in his Daily Telegraph column – although he did unleash a storm of complaint by describing fully veiled Muslim women as looking like letter boxes and bank robbers. |
| It will be seen as preparing the ground for a leadership challenge to May just as the Brexit negotiations reach their critical phase in the autumn, which is to culminate in any final deal agreed by the UK government being put to parliament for a vote.The Commons returns for just over a week on Tuesday, the first chance for Conservative MPs to compare notes about the state of grassroots feeling over Brexit. Many ordinary members, who have the right to choose between the final two candidates chosen by MPs, are unhappy with Chequers, fearing the plan 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 on 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.” | It will be seen as preparing the ground for a leadership challenge to May just as the Brexit negotiations reach their critical phase in the autumn, which is to culminate in any final deal agreed by the UK government being put to parliament for a vote.The Commons returns for just over a week on Tuesday, the first chance for Conservative MPs to compare notes about the state of grassroots feeling over Brexit. Many ordinary members, who have the right to choose between the final two candidates chosen by MPs, are unhappy with Chequers, fearing the plan 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 on 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.” |
| Another group of Tory MPs is also 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. | Another group of Tory MPs is also 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. |
| May’s former deputy, Damian Green, a close ally of the PM on the backbenches, said language such as that used by Johnson was unhelpful, arguing that the Chequers proposal was the only coherent plan yet drawn up. | |
| “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,” Green told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. | |
| “What’s interesting now is that the only plan on the table is the British government’s plan. 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.” | “What’s interesting now is that the only plan on the table is the British government’s plan. 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. He added: “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?” | |
| On Sunday, David Davis, another former cabinet minister, criticised May for admitting she would have to make compromises to the EU beyond the Chequers agreement in order to achieve a Brexit deal. The former Brexit secretary told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show that he could not vote for what has been proposed because it was worse than staying in. | On Sunday, David Davis, another former cabinet minister, criticised May for admitting she would have to make compromises to the EU beyond the Chequers agreement in order to achieve a Brexit deal. The former Brexit secretary told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show that he could not vote for what has 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 column for a Sunday newspaper that she would “not be pushed into accepting compromises” on the Chequers plan that are “not in our national interest”. | Davis, who also resigned because he said he could not endorse the Chequers deal, was speaking after the prime minister had said in a column for a Sunday newspaper that she would “not be pushed into accepting compromises” on the Chequers plan that are “not in our national interest”. |
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