PM’s spokesman declines to say if Commons vote against no deal would change anything

Brexit will take place on 31 October “whatever the circumstances”, Downing Street has said, refusing to say whether Boris Johnson would regard a vote in parliament against a no-deal departure as sufficient reason to change course.

Quizzed repeatedly at a media briefing, the prime minister’s spokesman also declined to say whether the government would consider allowing no deal to happen if it were amid an election campaign, or if Johnson lost a no-confidence vote in the Commons.

The spokesman said he could not comment on hypothetical situations. But asked whether, as a matter of broader principle, Johnson could commit to respecting votes in parliament, he also declined to answer.

He pointed out that a no-deal departure was simply the consequence of legislation as it stood: “The legal default, as put in place by parliament, is that the UK will leave on 31 October, with or without a deal.”

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The comments, which indicate a further ratcheting up of the new government’s rhetoric on no deal, began when the spokesman was asked whether it now appeared to be too late for the UK to depart with a new agreement.

Johnson currently has no Brexit talks scheduled with European leaders, having set down the unilateral condition that the EU must first ditch the backstop insurance clause for the Irish border, something Brussels has long insisted is impossible.

The spokesman said: “It is my job to set out the PM’s position, and that is that the UK will be leaving the EU on 31 October whatever the circumstances. There are no ifs or buts.

“We must restore trust in our democracy and fulfil the repeated promises of parliament to the people by coming out of the EU on 31 October. Politicians cannot choose which votes to respect. They promised to respect the referendum result. We must do so.”

Q&A What does a no-deal or WTO-rules Brexit mean? Show Hide If the UK leaves the EU without a deal it would by default, become a “third country”, with no overarching post-Brexit plan in place and no transition period. The UK would no longer be paying into the EU budget, nor would it hand over the £39bn divorce payment. The UK would drop out of countless arrangements, pacts and treaties, covering everything from tariffs to the movement of people, foodstuffs, other goods and data, to numerous specific deals on things such as aviation, and policing and security. Without an overall withdrawal agreement each element would need to be agreed. In the immediate aftermath, without a deal the UK would trade with the EU on the default terms of the World Trade Organization (WTO), including tariffs on agricultural goods. The UK government has already indicated that it will set low or no tariffs on goods coming into the country. This would lower the price of imports – making it harder for British manufacturers to compete with foreign goods. If the UK sets the tariffs to zero on goods coming in from the EU, under WTO “most favoured nation” rules it must also offer the same zero tariffs to other countries.

WTO rules only cover goods – they do not apply to financial services, a significant part of the UK’s economy. Trading under WTO rules will also require border checks, which could cause delays at ports, and a severe challenge to the peace process in Ireland without alternative arrangements in place to avoid a hard border.

Some no-deal supporters have claimed that the UK can use article XXIV of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (Gatt) to force the EU to accept a period of up to 10 years where there are no tariffs while a free trade agreement is negotiated. However, the UK cannot invoke article XXIV unilaterally – the EU would have to agree to it. In previous cases where the article has been used, the two sides had a deal in place, and it has never been used to replicate something of the scale and complexity of the EU and the UK’s trading relationship. The director general of the WTO, Roberto Azevêdo, has told Prospect magazine that “in simple factual terms in this scenario, you could expect to see the application of tariffs between the UK and EU where currently there are none”. Until some agreements are in place, a no-deal scenario will place extra overheads on UK businesses – eg the current government advice is that all drivers, including lorries and commercial vehicles, will require extra documentation to be able to drive in Europeif there is no deal. Those arguing for a “managed” no deal envisage that a range of smaller, sector-by-sector, bilateral agreements could be quickly put into place as mutual self-interest between the UK and EU to avoid introducing or to rapidly remove this kind of bureaucracy. Martin Belam

In a sometimes confusing series of exchanges with the media, Johnson’s spokesman refused at least 10 times to outline whether this deadline could be changed by the actions of MPs, saying he could not comment on theoretical situations.

Asked if Johnson would respect a no-confidence vote against his government were one passed, he said: “One hasn’t been called, and one hasn’t been held, and I have never discussed hypotheticals. The key point is we are leaving on 31 October whatever the circumstances.”

On the subject of whether Johnson would abide by a vote in parliament to, for example, stop or delay Brexit, the spokesman said: “My answer on this is not going to change, and none of those things have happened.”

There was a similar response on the notion of no deal happening on 31 October even if this fell during a general election campaign, a period when, by convention, the incumbent government does not take any major decisions.

The spokesman similarly declined to say whether a Johnson government had a general policy of abiding by votes of parliament, saying: “What I’m doing is not engaging in some hypothetical game you’re trying to pull me into.”

Having repeatedly declined to comment, the spokesman then rejected the idea it was fair to say the government was not ruling out ignoring the will of parliament, saying: “No, it wouldn’t be a fair characterisation. This conversation began with you putting forward hypothetical propositions, and I have said, ask me the questions about those specific votes at the time.”

The comments will nonetheless alarm opponents of a no-deal Brexit who fear Johnson might try to force through such an outcome against the wishes of MPs, for example by proroguing parliament, or by delaying a general election until after the Brexit date.

Speaking on a visit to the flood-threatened town of Whaley Bridge in Derbyshire, Jeremy Corbyn said Johnson “seems to be trying to slip no deal through, slip past parliament and slip past the British people”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jeremy Corbyn visiting Whaley Bridge on Monday, where he criticised Johnson’s no-deal plans. Photograph: Anthony Devlin/Getty Images

The Labour leader said no deal “will be really serious – serious for food prices, for medical supplies, for trade, for investment and drive us straight into the hands of the sort of trade deal that Donald Trump wants to do with Boris Johnson. I’m sorry, it’s not on, it’s not acceptable. We will do everything we can to block it.”

According to several reports, Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s senior adviser, had argued that even if MPs deposed the government in a no-confidence vote once the Commons resumed in September, it could then schedule an election to take place after 31 October.

Profile Who is Dominic Cummings? Show Hide Dominic Cummings, the son of an oil rig project manager and a special needs teacher, was born in Durham in 1971. He attended a state primary school followed by the fee-paying Durham school and, in 1994, Oxford University, where he studied ancient and modern history. After three years living in Russia, where he attempted to set up an airline connecting Samara in the south with Vienna, the then 28-year-old became campaign director of Business for Sterling, which worked to prevent Britain from joining the euro. Although he has never, as far as anyone knows, been a member of a political party, Cummings was headhunted to be director of strategy for the then Conservative leader, Iain Duncan Smith, in 2002. While he was seen as a “young, thrusting moderniser”, Cummings quickly offended party traditionalists. He quit the job after only eight months, describing Duncan Smith as incompetent. Following the 2010 general election, the then education secretary, Michael Gove, appointed Cummings as his chief of staff. Many in Whitehall found Cummings as difficult as he found them. In 2013, civil servants in the Department for Education complained to the Independent of an “us-and-them, aggressive, intimidating culture” created by Cummings and Gove. He never hid his disdain for the workings of Whitehall and has derided Westminster figures in eye-catching media interviews and published rambling blogposts that are obsessed over by Westminster insiders. He described prime minister David Cameron as “a sphinx without a riddle”, and former Brexit minister David Davis as “thick as mince, lazy as a toad, and vain as Narcissus”. In 2015, Cummings and the political strategist Matthew Elliott founded Vote Leave, which was designated by the Electoral Commission as the official EU referendum leave campaign in April of the following year. Since the EU referendum, its tactics have been the subject of a series of high-profile scandals. Vote Leave’s use of data analytics has been scrutinised after the Observer reported that the data-mining company Cambridge Analytica had links to the Canadian digital firm AggregateIQ, on which Vote Leave spent 40% of its campaign budget.

In July 2018, the Electoral Commission announced Vote Leave had been found guilty of breaking electoral law by overspending, following testimony from whistleblowers. The group was fined £61,000 and referred to the police.

Cummings has used his blog to furiously defend himself and the Vote Leave campaign. In March 2019, he was found in contempt of parliament for refusing to appear at a committee of MPs investigating fake news. Frances Perraudin

Separately, Cummings laid down the law to government special advisers about pushing through Brexit at an early morning meeting on Monday.

He was said to have been scathing about the former cabinet ministers Philip Hammond and Greg Clark for failing to prepare properly for a no-deal Brexit and charged advisers with making sure their departments were adequately ready for leaving on 31 October no matter what.