‘Boris is Boris’ says Theresa May over Brexit challenge
Prime minister rejects foreign secretary’s vision for quitting
Theresa May has rejected Boris Johnson’s vision of a hard Brexit but declined to be drawn on whether she would sack the foreign secretary, saying only: “Boris is Boris”.
Speaking to reporters on her way to Canada, Mrs May reasserted her control over Brexit and left open the possibility that payments to the EU would continue in the short term.
“This government is being run from the front,” she said.
Mrs May brushed aside Mr Johnson’s renewed assertion that Britain would reap a £350m-a-week Brexit dividend, some of which could be used to fund the NHS.
“Decisions on how money will be spent will be taken at the time,” she said.
Over the weekend Amber Rudd, home secretary, suggested Mr Johnson was acting like “a back seat driver”, after he wrote a 4,000-word article for the Daily Telegraph urging Mrs May not to pay a big Brexit bill.
Mrs May’s assertion that she was driving the government “from the front” was an attempt to regain a grip after a weekend which saw Mr Johnson sparring with Britain’s official statistician over the £350m claim.
Asked whether she would discipline or sack her foreign secretary, she said with a resigned air: “Boris is Boris”.
The prime minister claimed the cabinet was united behind the broad Brexit strategy she set out in her Lancaster House speech in January. “We are all going to the same destination,” she said.
The prime minister will on Friday use a speech in Florence to map out her plans for a no-change transition period, possibly lasting two years, during which Britain would continue to make EU contributions. Mrs May said Britain would not pay “large sums of money into the future” but did not rule out EU budget contributions in the two years after Brexit in March 2019; the UK’s net contributions are about £9bn a year.
Mr Johnson has argued for a short transition and says the UK should not pay for access to the single market; some have speculated he is paving the way to quit in the aftermath of the Florence speech. Downing Street is braced for the possibility that Mr Johnson could walk out before the Conservative conference in Manchester at the end of this month but, for now, Mrs May is trying to present a show of unity.
She said the cabinet was united behind the Lancaster House agenda, including securing “the right withdrawal agreement and the right deep and special partnership between the EU and UK in the future”.
The prime minister said that “by definition” Britain would save billions of pounds from EU contributions in the long run, but she declined to endorse Mr Johnson’s claim it would amount to £350m a week.
Mrs May will move on from Canada to New York, where she will come face to face with Mr Johnson at the same session of the UN general assembly. The two have not spoken since Mr Johnson’s intervention on Saturday.