Boris Johnson in Brexit bombshell as he refuses FOUR times to rule out toppling Theresa May if she won’t dump Chequers
The former Foreign Secretary praised the PM but repeatedly dodged questions about whether he was gearing up for another Tory leadership bid as party prepares for its annual conference
BORIS Johnson has refused four times to rule out standing against Theresa May if she won’t dump her Chequers plan for Brexit.
The former Foreign Secretary praised the Prime Minister but repeatedly dodged questions about whether he was gearing up for another Tory leadership bid.
It comes as he blasted Mrs May’s Brexit blueprint and outlined his own “Super Canada” arrangement in today's Telegraph.
Meanwhile the party prepares for its annual conference, with a host of senior figures on manoeuvres to try and dislodge Mrs May amid anger about how the negotiations with the EU are going.
Mr Johnson, the bookies' favourite to take over, is doing just one fringe event this week - but it is set to be one of the standout moments of the gathering in Birmingham..
Ahead of that he spoke to the BBC, whose political editor accused him of using his article to “stir up trouble”, saying the piece “is really about your own ambition”.
“But I think what he doesn’t realise is that whereas he used to be an electoral asset, that is now waning.”
Of the suggestion he could win a leadership contest, Mr Duncan raged: “Total, total rubbish. This is a fiction of journalistic imagination.
“And it’s simply not true. It’s just not borne out amongst any colleagues you talk to, when they sort of talk to the activists. It’s just a total myth.”
The minister also said his job was to “make sure that the Conservative party is not turned into the mutant child of Ukip”, which he said was where the ERG group of hard Brexiteers led by Jacob Rees-Mogg was taking it.
Boris doubles down on burka comments
BORIS Johnson said he stands by his comments about women who wear the burka – calling the controversy round them “confected indignation”.
He said over the last 25 years “you will find innumerable instances of things I was supposed to have said, blurted out, infelicities of expression, political incorrectitude of one kind or another”.
But speaking to Sky News he claimed for every single one “I’m trying to say something radically different from what people impute, and what I would ask your viewers to do is actually to go and look at the articles concerned.”
Pushed about calling those who ear a full face veil “bank robbers” and “letter boxes”, he added: “As I say I stand by what I wrote.
“I urge my friends and colleagues to look carefully at what I wrote.
“I think you’ll find invariably that there is an element of confected indignation about things that I’ve said that are wrenched out of context and in this particular context.”
In the interview he also said he stood by his description of Theresa May’s Chequers Brexit plan as “wrapping a suicide vest wrapped around Britain”.