Boris Johnson: A no-deal Brexit is closest to what Brits voted for

Emilio Casalicchio

Boris Johnson has claimed that a no-deal Brexit is the “closest to what people voted for” when they went to the polls in the 2016 EU referendum.



The leading Brexiteer argued that Brits approached the prospect of crashing out of the bloc without an agreement with “optimism and self-confidence”.

Britain will automatically leave the EU on World Trade Organisation terms on 29 March 29 if no deal is agreed with the EU.

Theresa May has been begging MPs to back the deal she clinched with Brussels, but there is little sign that the 100-plus Tory rebels, or her DUP partners, have softened their opposition to her agreement.

Former Foreign Secretary Mr Johnson, who has been urging his colleagues to reject the PM’s deal, said numerous grim warnings about a disorderly Brexit were met by the public with “indifference and resolve”.

In his weekly column for the Telegraph, he said the “most obvious answer, perhaps, that this option is closest to what people actually voted for”.

“It is no deal, or WTO terms, that actually corresponds to their idea of coming out,” he argued.

“And they view that option with a confidence that is now directly proportional to the growing strength of the Government’s warnings against it, because these doom-laden predictions are so hyperbolical as to suffer from the law of diminishing returns.

“Far from terrifying the public into accepting the Prime Minister’s deal, these threats are increasing a determination to reject it.”

Meanwhile, more than 200 MPs from across the Brexit divide have urged Mrs May to rule out leading the country out of the EU without a deal.

Today ministers are filling Manston airfield in Kent with up to 150 HGVs to rehearse emergency no-deal plans in case major delays at Dover spark a traffic nightmare on the roads.