Brexit. Why do Brits want Out of the EU?

Brexit party leader praises Boris Johnson and criticises ‘intrusion’ into his private life

The Brexit party leader, Nigel Farage, has put forward the prospect of a coalition with the Conservative party to ensure the UK leaves the EU without a deal, and offered Boris Johnson his support following his row with his partner.

“I’d do a deal with the devil to get a proper, clean Brexit,” Farage told TalkRadio.

Asked about the prospect of an electoral pact, he said: “If Brexit is not delivered, there might be some local deals done here and there, but if the Conservative party drop the ball on this then they’re toast.”

He also pointedly praised Johnson, claiming many Eurosceptics had joined the Conservative party in the past few months to ensure he became prime minister. And Farage said Johnson would be hailed as “an all-time national hero” if he managed to face down parliament by delivering a no-deal Brexit by 31 October.

He also backed Johnson after his row with his partner, Carrie Symonds, on Thursday night was recorded by her neighbours and reported to the police.

“I think for people to record through the wall what is being said is absolutely disgusting,” Farage said. “There has to be a limit to this intrusion on people’s private lives.”

But he did say the frontrunner for the Conservative leadership should have answered questions about the row at a hustings event on Saturday. “All he had to say is that there was an argument and the police were called by malicious neighbours. Who hasn’t had an argument? That’s all he had to say,” Farage said.

Speaking three years and a day after the EU referendum, Farage said he was more certain than he had been at the time of the result that Brexit would happen.

Boris Johnson has been warned that as many as a dozen Conservative MPs will back a vote of no-confidence, triggering a general election, to block a no-deal Brexit.

The former foreign secretary has promised to take the UK out of the EU on 31 October with or without agreement on divorce terms. And his rival for the Tory leadership Jeremy Hunt has not ruled out a potentially damaging no-deal outcome, though he says he is ready to extend Brexit negotiations in the hope of avoiding it.

With the incoming prime minister likely to have a working majority of no more than three MPs in the House of Commons when he arrives at 10 Downing Street next month, defence minister Tobias Ellwood left no doubt that opponents of no-deal believe they have the numbers to stop the UK crashing out.

"I think a dozen or so members of Parliament would be on our side, would be voting against supporting a no deal, and that would include ministers as well as backbenchers," he told BBC1’s Panorama: The Race for Number 10.

Tory grandee Kenneth Clarke, a veteran of Margaret Thatcher’s governments, said he would not rule out joining a no-confidence rebellion, insisting: “I am not going to vote in favour of a government that says it is going to pursue policies which are totally incompatible with everything the Conservative Party has stood for under all those prime ministers for the decades that I have been in Parliament."

nd Mr Hunt suggested that the coalition of hard Brexiteers and moderates which carried Mr Johnson to overwhelming victory in the Westminster phase of the leadership race last week will “collapse” swiftly if the former London mayor reaches office.

"Sometimes in politics you can fudge and get away with it but in the case of Brexit you are going to have to make decisions immediately, and that very fragile coalition will collapse immediately when you have to make those decisions,” Mr Hunt told Radio 4’s Today.

"If that happens we won't have another leadership contest, we will have Jeremy Corbyn in No 10 and there won't be any Brexit at all."

The warnings came as controversy raged over Mr Johnson “bottling” debate as the four-week campaign for the votes of 160,000 Conservative members gets under way.

Mr Hunt told his rival not to be a coward and to “man up” and face him in head-to-head TV debates, as Sky News cancelled a showdown planned for Tuesday when Mr Johnson declined to sign up.

The foreign secretary branded his opponent “very disrespectful” for refusing to take part in debates before ballot papers are sent out to Tory members on 6 July, when many are expected to immediately cast their votes.

LONDON (Reuters) - Boris Johnson, the favorite to become British prime minister, said he was prepared to lead Britain out of the European Union without a deal on Oct. 31 and said any EU attempt to impose trade tariffs would be akin to a Napoleonic-era blockade.

The United Kingdom’s three-year Brexit crisis could be about to deepen as Johnson’s pledge to leave the EU with or without a deal on Halloween could provoke a standoff with parliament, which has indicated its opposition to a no-deal exit.

No-deal means there would be no transition period so the exit would be abrupt, the nightmare scenario for many business leaders and the dream of hard Brexiteers who want a decisive split.

Johnson, a former foreign minister and London mayor, said he was convinced the EU would agree a new deal based on bits of outgoing Prime Minister Theresa May’s “dead” Withdrawal Agreement.

“My pledge is to come out of the EU at Halloween on 31 October,” Johnson, 55, told BBC TV, adding that there were “technical fixes” to prevent the return of a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK.

Johnson reaffirmed his view, contested by many, that Britain could retain tariff-free trade with the EU after a no-deal exit.

It means if Johnson does indeed become the next UK prime minister, he may also be its last.

Gordon Brown has warned the future of the union between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland is "more at risk" than at any time in 300 years.

The ex-prime minister said the United Kingdom risked "unravelling" due to Brexit and the "narrow nationalism" of the Conservative and SNP governments.

In a speech in London, he urged the "patriotic majority" to speak up against their values being "hijacked".

Brexit supporters have dismissed claims it could hasten Scottish independence.

Scotland voted overwhelmingly to stay in the EU in the 2016 referendum, as did Northern Ireland, while Wales and England voted to leave.

The proposers of hi-tech solutions to avoid Irish border checks after Brexit, backed by Boris Johnson, have admitted they have no idea what they would cost.

Quizzed by MPs, the head of the Prosperity UK think-tank denied the annual bill would be £13bn, but acknowledged: “We don’t have a figure.”

The stance was criticised by one MP on the Commons Northern Ireland committee who told Shanker Singham: “Somewhere you must have made a calculation of the cost?”

Mr Johnson has made so-called “alternative arrangements” to solve the border controversy a key plank of his promise to renegotiate Theresa May’s divorce deal.

On Monday, the Tory leadership favourite insisted there were “abundant” technical solutions, but “no single magic bullet”, to settle the issue.

Prosperity UK, funded by a Brexit-supporting hedge fund manager, has already acknowledged the plan would take up to three years to implement – so would not be ready for a no-deal Brexit in October.

MPs are expected to launch a fresh attempt to block a future prime minister pushing a no-deal Brexit policy by threatening to cut off vital funds for government departments.

The cross-party plan, led by Conservative MP Dominic Grieve and senior Labour MP Dame Margaret Beckett, aims to force the future Tory leader to gain parliament's consent for leaving the EU without a deal.

Their amendment to route finance legislation in the Commons – known as "estimates" – would cut off funding for government ministries if the PM failed to do so.

Boris Johnson’s claims about the prospects of rewriting the Brexit deal have been compared by the European parliament’s Brexit coordinator to the “false promises, pseudo-patriotism, and foreigner-bashing” he is said to have used to win the referendum.

The suggestion from the Tory leadership frontrunner that he will be able to dump Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement, withhold the UK’s £39bn divorce bill and still negotiate a free trade deal in Brussels has been savaged by Guy Verhofstadt.

The former prime minister of Belgium said Johnson’s assertion during the current leadership campaign was a myth. In a withering assessment of the race between Johnson and Jeremy Hunt, who also claims he will be able to renegotiate the deal, Verhofstadt said it appeared they have “learned nothing whatsoever”.

The EU has repeatedly said it will not renegotiate the agreement struck and that the UK will crash out unless the Commons ratifies the full package, including the protocol containing the so-called Irish backstop for avoiding a hard border on the island of Ireland.

Describing Johnson as the Vote Leave campaign’s “most prominent architect” and “a man who continues to dissemble, exaggerate, and disinform”, Verhofstadt said he appeared to be unable to stop spreading “untruths”.

“Chief among them is the myth that Britain can tear up the withdrawal agreement that May negotiated with the EU, withhold its financial commitments to the bloc, and simultaneously start negotiating free trade deals,” Verhofstadt said. “To Johnson’s followers, however, he is more prophet than politician: only he can deliver a mythical ‘true Brexit’ that will deliver the prosperity promised during the referendum campaign.”

He added: “As is often the case with populists, reality does not square with Johnson’s ensorcelling combination of false promises, pseudo-patriotism, and foreigner-bashing.

“He and his fellow Brexiteers speak of a ‘global Britain’ that will trade freely with the rest of the world, even as they drag their country down a path strewn with uprooted trade ties and substantial new barriers to commerce.”

Johnson has said he believes that with “positive energy” he will be able to either persuade Brussels to ditch the backstop, which would otherwise keep the UK in a customs union until another border solution is found, or agree to a “standstill” in the current relations through article 24 of the general agreement on tariffs and trade.

The latter claim has been described as “not true” by the international trade secretary, Liam Fox, among others. He pointed out that article 24 requires EU agreement, which Brussels has said it will not give.

The EU is due to announce the finalising of a trade deal with the Mercosur bloc – Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay – that will reduce tariffs on European products being exported to those countries.

The EU has been keen to further burnish its trade credentials after enjoying a purple patch of negotiations, including with Japan, with whom it struck the world’s largest bilateral free trade deal.

“With Johnson likely taking power in late July, Europe will have offered still more proof that Brexit is not only unnecessary but also detrimental to Britain’s economic interests,” Verhofstadt writes in an article for Project Syndicate. “The ‘buccaneering’ Brexiteers might then finally have to explain what it is they’re still complaining about.”

Meanwhile, as Finland takes over the six-month rotating presidency of the EU, the country’s minister of European affairs, Tytti Tuppurainen, said the UK needed to “define for herself both the answers and the basic rules of the game” in the Brexit conundrum, in a sign of the growing frustration with Britain.

While the favourite to be Britain’s next prime minister feeds his public disinformation, the EU is homing in on a huge trade deal

Three years after the United Kingdom’s Brexit referendum, the UK is no closer to figuring out how to leave the European Union – and what comes next – than it was when the result was announced. And now a Conservative party leadership election to replace the outgoing prime minister, Theresa May, is in full swing. To those of us watching from the outside, the debate between the candidates confirms that they have learned nothing whatsoever from the past two years of negotiations with the EU.

Sadly, this comes as no surprise, given that the lead candidate is Boris Johnson, the leave campaign’s most prominent architect and a man who continues to dissemble, exaggerate and disinform the public about Brexit. In 2016, Johnson and his fellow Brexiteers duped a narrow majority of UK voters into thinking that leaving the EU would somehow furnish the NHS with an additional £350m per week. He also drummed up fears that Britain’s EU membership would somehow lead to mass immigration from Turkey (which happens to be the homeland of his paternal great-grandfather, Ali Kemal).

Though Johnson will most likely soon find himself in a position where he must make good on his promises, he continues to spread untruths. Chief among them is the myth that Britain can tear up the withdrawal agreement that May negotiated with the EU, withhold its financial commitments to the bloc, and simultaneously start negotiating free-trade deals. To Johnson’s followers, however, he is more prophet than politician: only he can deliver a mythical “true Brexit” that will bring the prosperity promised during the referendum campaign.

As is often the case with populists, reality does not square with Johnson’s enticing combination of false promises, pseudo-patriotism and foreigner-bashing. He and his fellow Brexiteers speak of a “global Britain” that will trade freely with the rest of the world, even as they drag their country down a path strewn with uprooted trade ties and substantial new barriers to commerce.

The real global trading power, of course, is the EU, which has recently concluded trade deals with Japan, South Korea and Canada. As an EU member state, the UK automatically benefits from the 40 trade agreements the bloc has in place with more than 70 countries. If the UK opts for a “hard” Brexit and leaves without a deal, as Johnson has indicated he is willing to do, it would immediately lose preferential access to markets that account for around 11% of its total trade. (Though May’s government has signed continuity deals with some countries, they do not cover nearly as much trade as the UK’s existing arrangement within the EU.)

Moreover, the EU is finalising negotiations for a new free-trade agreement with the Mercosur bloc – Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay – as part of a broader association agreement between the two regions. That will cement the EU’s position as the global leader of open trade. Though European companies already export a great deal to Mercosur – €42bn in goods in 2016; €22bn in services in 2015 – tariff barriers are currently high. European exporters face levies of 35% on cars, 20-35% on machinery and related components, and 14% on pharmaceuticals.

The proposed trade deal doesn’t lack opponents, including some non-governmental organisations and EU member states with substantial beef industries. EU negotiators will have to strike a careful balance to protect the rights of all Europeans across economic sectors. They will also need to address deteriorating human-rights and environmental conditions in Brazil, and push for provisions to encourage companies to act responsibly, uphold food-safety standards, and police against imitations of European food and drink products.

All told, an EU-Mercosur trade agreement – which would be one of the largest trade deals in the world, affecting 750 million people – represents a win-win, creating opportunities for growth and jobs on both sides. At a time when the US and China are locked in a trade and technology war with no end in sight, the EU and the Mercosur countries have a chance to lead the world in a more promising direction.

Indeed, there is a strong strategic case for finalising the agreement. As Martin Sandbu of the Financial Times recently argued: “The EU does not have many military divisions … but it has something nearly as awesome. Authority over the world’s largest market.” The EU must use its collective purchasing power to raise standards globally, particularly with respect to environmental protection.

A successful conclusion to the EU-Mercosur talks would send a message to the rest of the world about the value and importance of open trade. With Johnson likely taking power in late July, Europe will have offered still more proof that Brexit is not only unnecessary but also detrimental to Britain’s economic interests. The “buccaneering” Brexiteers might then finally have to explain what it is they’re still complaining about.

Boris Johnson reportedly accused the French of being "turds" over their Brexit stance in a remark that was removed from a BBC documentary while he was foreign secretary.

The undiplomatic language from Mr Johnson – now frontrunner in the contest to succeed Theresa May in Number 10 – was censored after concerns it would make Anglo-French relations "awkward".

According to the Daily Mail, Mr Johnson made the crude remark as the BBC filmed its fly-on-the-wall documentary 'Inside the Foreign Office' showing viewers the secretive world of British diplomats.

But the Foreign Office asked for the word to be cut from the documentary, with a Whitehall memo suggesting the comment would adversely affect relations with close ally Emmanuel Macron.

By the time the three-part documentary was aired on the BBC last year, Mr Johnson, however, had already resigned as foreign secretary in protest at the prime minister's plans for Brexit.

Boris Johnson refused to rule out suspending parliament to force through a no-deal Brexit as he stepped up his campaign to become the next prime minister.

The Tory leadership frontrunner confirmed the option was on the table after Jeremy Hunt urged him to be “straight with the people” and accused him of getting “some important facts wrong”.