Boris Johnson to delay Brexit by six months if he topples Theresa May to become PM
The former Foreign Secretary plans to use the time to reset the negotiations deadlock with Brussels
BORIS Johnson has told senior Tories he would delay Brexit by at least six months if he can topple Theresa May to become PM.
The former Foreign Secretary wants to use the pause to reset stalled negotiations with the EU.
The mop haired Tory’s plan has surfaced after he began privately setting out his leadership stall to some Cabinet ministers in a bid to win them over, The Sun can reveal.
Boris is convinced Britain needs more time to prepare for a no deal scenario to regain the upper hand as endgame begins with Brussels on the two year-long Brexit talks.
But the move risks angering Leave voters, as the UK will not exit the EU under his plan until the end of October 2019 at the earliest.
One Cabinet minister that Boris has confided in said: “People will not put up with us delaying Brexit by a single day, so I’ve told Boris I don’t think his plan works.
“We're in a bugger’s muddle alright, but it won’t be any better in six months time so we have to tough it out with the EU now”.
The revelation comes as Boris is set to hijack all attention at the Tories’ annual conference in Birmingham.
Mr Johnson will headline an anti-Chequers rally with a tub thumping speech at the party’s annual gathering.
But he has also suffered a withering backlash from Brexiteer and Remainer Tories alike after they accused him of trying to destabilise the PM by branding her soft Brexit blueprint “deranged”.
Another Cabinet minister accused Boris of misjudging Tory activists’ mood at the conference.
The minister told The Sun: “Boris is self-destructing at the moment. Everything he has said is badly miscalculated, because he is a man in a desperate hurry and it’s looking over the top and desperate.
“It’s a sad sight really, because he has so much potentially talent.”
Other Tory MPs were openly seething with him.
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Boris’s successor in the seat of Henley, John Howell MP, told The Sun: “As far as I’m concerned, Boris can just f*** off””.
Balding former Cabinet minister and May loyalist Damian Green was equally scathing.
He told activists yesterday that he will miss the “annual Boris performance” today as “sadly I’m washing my hair”.
Boris is still favourite to succeed Theresa May as leader among Tory activists, scooping 30% of their support in the latest survey of members by the ConHome website. Though he has lost some ground to second placed Home Secretary Sajid Javid, who is now on 19%.
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