It was a contentious suggestion – but the new foreign secretary, Dominic Raab was adamant. During an interview on BBC’s Today programme, he seemed to say the 2016 referendum result gave a mandate for a no-deal Brexit.

In a testy exchange, he insisted it was made “clear” by “those on the campaign” that “we should strive for a good deal, but if that wasn’t available that we should go on and make a success of Brexit”.

When repeatedly challenged on Monday about the claim and asked to provide proof, he added: “I was questioned on it by the BBC almost every time I appeared and so was Michael Gove.”

Raab’s comments provoked the People’s Vote campaign to accuse him of trying to rewrite history. It said: “The reality is that neither the official Vote Leave campaign or any of its prominent spokespeople – including Boris Johnson and Dominic Raab – promised anything other than a deal with Europe and a continuation of free trade.”

As the country heads towards the 31 October deadline, the Guardian has analysed the previous stated positions of some of the key players in the Vote Leave camp.

Most, including Boris Johnson, focused on the ease with which the UK would get a free trade deal.

Dominic Raab, foreign secretary

Two months before the June 2016 referendum vote, Raab told Andrew Neil on BBC Sunday Politics: “We’re very well placed, and mutual self-interest suggests we’d cut a very good deal and it’s certainly not in the European’s interests to erect trade barriers.”

During an appearance on the BBC’s Daily Politics in April 2016, Raab added: “The idea that Britain would be apocalyptically off the cliff edge if we left the EU is silly.”

However, post-referendum, Raab appeared to have changed his tune, writing for Brexit Central in October 2016: “Ideally, we continue trading without tariffs or other barriers. In the worst-case scenario, we would face the EU’s external tariff, which averages 3.6%, rising to 10% on cars and 32% on wine.” Later in the piece, he adds: “Even on the worst case scenario, Britain will thrive outside the EU.”

In March 2017, Raab wrote in the Telegraph: “If there’s no deal within two years, it won’t be for lack of an ambitious UK offer. It would represent the triumph of the EU’s rather inward-looking politics over the reality of the outside world. That would be a shame, but only serve to vindicate Britain’s decision to leave.”

Invited to provide evidence for Raab’s comments to the BBC, a Cabinet Office spokeswoman said: “This is not for the civil service to answer.”

Boris Johnson, prime minister

Johnson told the Treasury select committee in March 2016: “Our relationship with the EU is already very well developed. It doesn’t seem to me to be very hard … to do a free trade deal very rapidly indeed.”

Speaking at a Vote Leave event in March 2016, Johnson said: “I put it to you, all those who say that there would be barriers to trade with Europe if we were to do a Brexit, do you seriously believe that they would put up tariffs against UK produce of any kind, when they know how much they want to sell us their cake, their champagne, their cheese from France? It is totally and utterly absurd.”

In a Telegraph column published three days after the referendum result, Johnson said: “[We] who agreed with this majority verdict must accept that it was not entirely overwhelming.”

He sought to reassure remain voters that the UK would still have access to the single market: “EU citizens living in this country will have their rights fully protected, and the same goes for British citizens living in the EU. British people will still be able to go and work in the EU; to live; to travel; to study; to buy homes and to settle down,” he said. “The only change – and it will not come in any great rush – is that the UK will extricate itself from the EU’s extraordinary and opaque system of legislation.”

Johnson, then foreign secretary, told the House of Commons in July 2017: “There is no plan for no deal because we are going to get a great deal.”

Michael Gove, chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster

In April 2016, Michael Gove said the UK would have the best of both worlds. “Outside the EU, we would still benefit from the free trade zone which stretches from Iceland to the Russian border,” he said. “But we wouldn’t have all the EU regulations which cost our economy £600m every week.”

Matthew Elliot, former chief executive of Vote Leave

Responding to the Office for National Statistics’ trade figures in March 2016, Matthew Elliott, the chief executive of Vote Leave, said: “It’s clear the trade deck is stacked in the UK’s favour. EU trade is shrinking yet we are held back from striking deals with emerging markets as we’ve given up control to Brussels. The real question should be why our EU neighbours wouldn’t be clambering over themselves to secure a free trade deal with their biggest market.”

And in response to a report by The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report on the economic consequences of Brexit in April 2016, Vote Leave issued a press release with an accompanying note criticising the “flawed assumption” that the UK would not do a free trade deal with the EU after Brexit.

It read: “The OECD states that: ‘trade with the EU and other countries would initially revert to a WTO MFN-basis’. This is a highly flawed assumption that not even the IN campaign seriously contemplates as a realistic possibility. Leading pro-EU campaigners have admitted the UK will strike a free trade agreement if we Vote Leave.”

Liam Fox, former international trade secretary

After the referendum, in July 2017, the then-international trade secretary Liam Fox said: “The free trade agreement that we will have to do with the European Union should be one of the easiest in human history. We are already beginning with zero tariffs, and we are already beginning at the point of maximal regulatory equivalence, as it is called. In other words, our rules and our laws are exactly the same.”