Brexit: Is Boris Set to Quit?

Boris Johnson’s father Stanley has fuelled speculation that the Foreign Secretary is preparing to quit his Cabinet post in protest if Theresa May sets out anything other than a hardline approach to a Brexit transition in a key address in Florence on Friday.

Stanley Johnson suggested his son was unhappy with background briefings in Westminster suggesting the Prime Minister may be planning to use the Florence speech to try to break the impasse in Brexit talks by signalling that Britain is prepared to continue paying billions of pounds each year for access to the European single market during a transition period of at least two years after leaving the EU.

The Foreign Secretary deepened a Cabinet split on the issue by pre-empting the Prime Minister and going public with a 4,000-word article in the Daily Telegraph in which he repeated his argument from the Brexit referendum campaign that there should be no such payments.

“This is such an important issue,” Stanley Johnson told Sky News, “that I would have thought he would be happy, happy, happy to walk away from the whole thing if that’s what he had to do.”

“It seems perfectly clear to me that Boris would say ‘Look, this is such an important issue, the way we leave, such an important issue i.e. are we going to go on with a transition period which may be two years, may be four years, may be 10 years’, or are we going to say ‘No, we voted to leave’?

“I seem to remember reading Boris’s book on Churchill was 52 weeks in the bestseller list, don’t tell me he hasn’t got other things to do.”

Johnson’s opponents within the Tory party suggested that with growing doubts about his optimistic promises during last year’s referendum campaign about life after Brexit the Foreign Secretary may be planning to jump ship to distance himself from the eventual outcome of the struggling Brexit negotiations.

Machinations

The Foreign Secretary did not firmly rule out quitting during his own TV interview in New York , where he was due to meet the Prime Minister. Asked if he was considering a resignation, Johnson initially said ‘I think you may be barking up the wrong tree’ but then clouded that message by ruminating about a future out of the Cabinet. “When the burden of office is lifted from my shoulders I will of course look back with great pride on my time doing all sorts of things,” he said.

In his Daily Telegraph article, Johnson argued the UK should not pay for access to the EU’s single market for goods and services, countering a plan floated by Chancellor Philip Hammond and Brexit Secretary David Davis. From the EU’s perspective, the infighting in London does little to settle their concerns about whether May has the authority to break the deadlock in the Brexit talks.

When reporters asked May asked whether she was frustrated by her Foreign Secretary’s machinations she attempted to play them down as the antics of a colourful colleague, saying “Boris is Boris”.

Tory Grandee and EU supporter Ken Clarke was scathing about Johnson when he appeared on BBC’s Today programme, noting that Johnson had used the Telegrpah article to try to defend his debunked claims that brexity would provide a dividend to Britain of £350m that is supposedly now sent to the EU each week. “Personal campaigning by the Foreign Secretary is just an irrelevant nuisance,” he said. “I think people have said enough about someone who is the Foreign Secretary just joining in the discussions and repeating one of the more simplistic and dishonest arguments of the hardline Leavers during the referendum campaign.”

“They should tell him (Johnson) if he wants to be foreign secretary he should make some more serious contributions on wider foreign policy and keep his views on the Brexit negotiations to private conversations, as ministers have always done.”

“Sounding off personally in this way is totally unhelpful. And he shouldn’t exploit the position she hasn’t got a majority in Parliament and he knows perfectly well that normally a foreign secretary would be sacked instantly for doing that. She, unfortunately, after the election is not in a position to sack him. But he should stop exploiting it.”

Clarke was asked if Johnson was only writing what many in the Tory government believe. “All this is if you jump off the cliff and spread out your arms you are flying up to the far, blue yonder. That is not a policy.”

by Bob Graham

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