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Jeremy Hunt today warned French president Emmanuel Macron to do a deal on Brexit or risk the UK becoming a “strategic” competitor just offshore of the EU.

The Foreign Secretary piled pressure on Paris to ditch its hardline stance on Brexit as Attorney General Geoffrey Cox dashed to Brussels to seek a breakthrough in the deadlocked talks on the UK’s “divorce” from the EU.

Mr Cox was reportedly set to table a text setting out Britain’s proposals to attach to the withdrawal agreement, to ensure that the Northern Ireland border backstop could not be used to bind the UK indefinitely into a customs union. Mr Hunt, though, admitted that time was now “very short” to clinch a deal and could only say that he was “reasonably positive” about signals coming out of the EU.

He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “The strategic decision, not just for the UK, but for Europe as well, for President Macron and his colleagues in continental Europe, is — is the relationship that continental Europe has with the UK after Brexit going to be the closest friendships, that is what we want, between countries that have basically the same values, or is going to be a relationship of strategic competition?”

Mr Hunt spoke out after Mr Macron tore into Brexiteers, calling them “anger-mongers backed by fake news” whose “lies and irresponsibility” have thrown the whole of Europe into danger.

The French leader urged the rest of the EU to “stand firm, proud and lucid in the face of this manipulation”.

Ministers have previously warned of the UK becoming a Singapore-style competitor to the EU and Mr Hunt resurrected the prospect of this as the Government was laying out its “legally significant ask” for substantive changes to enable Mr Cox to tell MPs that the UK could not be trapped in the backstop indefinitely.

The Foreign Secretary said a “fair arbitration mechanism” could be part of the solution, with Brussels refusing to accept a time limit on the backstop or a unilateral exit system for the UK.

The senior Cabinet minister also did not rule out a delay to Brexit, or a free vote on extending Article 50, a week before the crunch vote on Theresa May’s Brexit blueprint, and the March 29 departure date fast approaching.

He added that there would be “huge disruption” if the UK crashed out of the EU with no deal, with many ministers privately aghast at the potential turmoil of such a scenario.

Mr Hunt rejected Mr Macron’s characterisation of the EU referendum in June 2016 in the UK.

However, former foreign secretary David Miliband said the French president’s intervention highlighted how the British public had allegedly been misled.

“As Parliament considers its final choices on Brexit, the truth is increasingly clear that what the Brexit people were promised in 2016 is not on offer,” said the former Labour MP, who is now based in New York working for International Rescue Committee.

“It cannot be undemocratic to give the people the final say on whether to go ahead with Brexit.”

President Macron made his views clear in a 1,600-word comment piece that has been translated into 22 languages and has been published in newspapers in each of the EU’s 28 member countries..