Boris Johnson told the Conservative Party faithful yesterday that he and other top Tory ministers were united behind “every syllable” of the Brexit plans of Prime Minister Theresa May.
“You won – we won. Theresa May won,” he said. “The whole country owes her a debt for her steadfastness in taking Britain forward, as she will, to a great Brexit deal, based on that Florence speech on whose every syllable, I can tell you, the whole Cabinet is united”.
If anyone at the conference in Manchester was convinced by any of Johnson’s declarations – that May is a winner, there is going to a great deal with the EU, and the Cabinet is united on Brexit – nobody on the other side of that Brexit deal was even half persuaded.
Manfred Weber, a close ally of German Chancellor Angela Merkel told the European Parliament in Strasboug yesterday that divisions in May’s Cabinet were putting any deal at risk and May should sack Johnson. Weber, the leader of the largest grouping of MEPs, said during a debate on the progress of the UK-EU talks that removing the Foreign Secretary from his post would bring greater certainty about the UK’s views.
“The question for the moment is who shall I call in London (on Brexit)?” Weber said. “Who speaks for the British government – Theresa May, Boris Johnson, or even David Davis? By reading Johnson’s attacks against his own Prime Minister he shows the British government is trapped by their own party quarrels and political contradictions. Please sack Johnson because we will have clear answers as to who is responsible for the British position.”
“Still No Clarity”
Weber’s concerns were echoed by the Parliament’s influential Brexit coordinator, Guy Verhofstadt (left), who told MEPs that he had a “big worry”. “That is the lack of clarity – or I can even say disunity – at the other side of the negotiation table. Hammond, Fox. Johnson, May.”
Addressing the MEPs, European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker said May’s address in Florence two weeks ago had been “conciliatory”, but not detailed enough to move things at anything like the speed that London wants.
“When it comes to Brexit we still cannot talk about the future with any real clarity … Speeches are not negotiating positions,” he complained.
The chamber in Strasbourg, which will have a right of veto over any future withdrawal agreement with the UK, later overwhelmingly supported a resolution condemning the UK for its handling of the negotiations. The Parliament urged the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier not to move the negotiations onto the trade issues that London desperately wants to discuss, until there is more progress on the EU’s “threshold issues” of the rights of expat EU citizens, the Irish border and Britain’s “divorce payment” to the EU.
The European Parliament further advised EU heads of state who are due to meet on October 19 that they should not authorise the talks moving onto the next phase, even though time is rapidly running out for the negotiations to make early enough progress to avoid uncertainty and disruption ahead of Brexit in March, 2019.
Back in Manchester, Johnson praised the PM, attacked the record of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and cracked jokes to raise the morale of the party conference. The Foreign Secretary has twice in the past 16 days gone “off piste” by publishing his own Brexit plans and “red lines”, which go beyond those of his leader and Cabinet, but he was at pains not to repeat them at the conference.
Earlier in the day the Prime Minister was asked in a number of broadcast interviews why she had failed to sack Johnson for his disloyalty over Brexit, and she repeatedly sidestepped the question by offering an obviously rehearsed answer. It would be terrible leadership, May said, if she were to surround herself with “a Cabinet of yes-men.” If only.
by Bob Graham
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