PM Johnson:

MPs Engaged in ‘Terrible' Collaboration With EU

Date: 14 August 2019 - 21:50

News ID: ۶۹۳۲۴

LONDON (Reuters) -- Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Wednesday some British lawmakers hoping to block Brexit were engaged in "terrible” collaboration with the European Union by undermining London’s negotiating hand and so making no deal more likely.
Hours after senior lawmakers said they would seek to prevent any attempt to ignore parliament over Brexit, Johnson used a question-and-answer session on Facebook to attack them.
"There is a terrible kind of collaboration as it were going on between those who think they can block Brexit in parliament and our European friends,” Johnson, who has been hailed by the U.S. president as "Britain’s Trump”, said on Facebook.
"We need our European friends to compromise and the more they think that there’s a chance that Brexit can be blocked in parliament, the more adamant they are in sticking to their position,” Johnson said.
Johnson’s use of the word "collaborator” has historical echoes for Britons given the use of that epithet for people who cooperated with Nazi Germany during World War Two.
It followed remarks by former finance minister Philip Hammond that parliament will block a no-deal Brexit if unelected people behind Johnson try to wrench Britain out on Oct. 31 without agreement.
The United Kingdom is heading towards a constitutional crisis at home and a showdown with the EU as Johnson has vowed to leave the bloc in 78 days time without a deal unless it agrees to renegotiate a Brexit divorce.
After more than three years of Brexit dominating EU affairs, the bloc has repeatedly refused to reopen the Withdrawal Agreement which includes an Irish border insurance policy that Johnson’s predecessor, Theresa May, agreed in November.
Hammond, who served as May’s finance minister for three years, said unelected people in Johnson’s Downing Street office were setting London on an "inevitable” course towards a no-deal Brexit by demanding the Irish backstop be dropped.
"The people behind this know that that means that there will be no deal,” Hammond told the BBC. "Parliament is clearly opposed to a no-deal exit, and the prime minister must respect that.”
The former minister’s first public intervention since resigning indicates the determination of a group of influential lawmakers to thwart Johnson if he goes for a no-deal Brexit.
Hammond said he was confident parliament, where a majority oppose a no-deal Brexit, would find a way to block that outcome.