Minister says UK must leave EU in March but departure is at risk without compromise

The international trade secretary, Liam Fox, has said he will back Theresa May’s Brexit proposals for Brexit on the basis that Britain must leave the EU next March and the terms can be later revised.

In a qualified endorsement of the prime minister as she faces down senior Brexiter Tories who lined up alongside Fox during the referendum, he said Brexit would be at risk in the absence of compromise.

“We must leave, and we must leave on 29 March. Not to deliver Brexit is the greatest political risk we could run,” Fox said in an interview with Bloomberg.

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“We should try to get as much of a final deal as we can get by 29 March, but it’s self-evident that if it’s a bilateral treaty, it can be revised later on.”

Fox has been among veteran Eurosceptics in the cabinet who have, for the most part, kept their counsel on May’s Chequers plan.

Fox’s comments are particularly significant in that he is the last of the three cabinet ministers originally charged with securing the best Brexit deal for Britain to still be in government after Boris Johnson and David Davis walked out.

“We all had our own reservations about it, but that is the collective decision,” he said of Chequers. “Whilst I may be very sympathetic with those who take an ideologically purist position, we are also politicians whose job is to be able to deliver.”

Fox has generally been in favour of the UK leaving the single market and trading under World Trade Organization rules. He was among speakers at the Conservative conference last weekend who strongly attacked EU leaders for the manner in which they dismissed May’s Chequers plan at the Salzburg summit a week earlier.

In his remarks to Bloomberg, Fox referred to the parliamentary arithmetic in what appeared to be a criticism of fellow Tories considering moves to oust May.

“There are two things that some people don’t quite seem to grasp,” said Fox, who has travelled extensively over the past two years as part of his department’s attempts to lay the groundwork for post-Brexit free trade agreements.

“One is that we have no majority in the House of Commons, and even if we did, that doesn’t guarantee that we have got a leaver majority. And the reality is that we will have to get any deal through the House of Commons in the end.”

His intervention come as Johnson and other hard Brexit Tories seized on remarks by Donald Tusk, the president of the European council, who said the EU remained ready to offer the UK a “Canada-plus-plus-plus deal” – a far-reaching trade accord with extra agreements on security and foreign policy.

They argued that Tusk’s comments showed it was time for May to abandon her Chequers proposals for remaining in a customs union for food and goods. “Tusk’s Canada-plus-plus-plus offer shows there is a superb way forward that can solve the Irish border problem and deliver a free-trade-based partnership that works well for both sides of the channel,” said Johnson.