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11 July 2017

Financial Times: UK has no plan B if Brexit talks fail, insists Boris Johnson


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The UK is not making contingency plans in the event of Brexit talks with the EU breaking down, Boris Johnson, foreign secretary, said in a statement that appeared to undermine Prime Minister Theresa May’s threat that she could walk away without a deal.


Mr Johnson’s assertion that the government has no plan B is also at odds with comments by David Davis, Brexit secretary, who has claimed he is spending half of his time preparing for a “no deal” outcome.
 
The foreign secretary was challenged in the House of Commons to set out what the government was doing to manage the risk of Britain having to leave the EU without an exit deal and with no trade agreement in prospect.
 
Emily Thornberry, shadow foreign secretary, asked Mr Johnson to spell out what “no deal” would mean, adding: “If he is not prepared to tell us that publicly, can he reassure us that at the very least he has a detailed private plan to manage that risk?”
 
Mr Johnson replied that such an outcome was “vanishingly unlikely”, adding: “There is no plan for no deal because we are going to get a great deal.”
 
His comments are striking given that the prime minister has insisted that she would be prepared to walk away from a bad deal, and that Britain would be ready to cope with the consequences.
 
Contingency plans would have to include proposals for new customs and frontier controls and a range of regulatory structures to replace EU agencies — all to be in place by the time Britain leaves the bloc in March 2019.
 
Allies of Mr Davis said the foreign secretary was simply “wrong” and that the Brexit department was engaged in more than 100 workstreams to ensure that Britain was ready for Brexit under any circumstances.
 
Mr Davis told the Daily Express in May: “Half of my work is preparing the ‘walk away’ option.” [...]
 
Full article on Financial Times (subscription required)


© Financial Times


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