Boris Johnson 'believes Theresa May's Brexit negotiations will fail'
Boris Johnson: Picture credit - PA
Boris Johnson believes Theresa May's Brexit negotiations will fail and Britain will crash out of the EU without a deal, it has been claimed.
According to the Sun, the Foreign Secretary recently told friends “nobody ever beats the EU in a negotiation”.
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An ally added: "He always makes a point of saying ‘no deal is better than a bad deal’ because he thinks it will be what we have to do.
“They want to punish us, that has always been Boris's view, and that has now come abundantly clear from the negotiations so far."
The latest development comes after days of bitter recrimination following Johnson's bombshell article in the Daily Telegraph setting out his vision for Brexit.
In it, the Foreign Secretary revived the Vote Leave claim that quitting the EU will save the UK around £350m a week, most of which can be spent on the NHS.
That sparked a backlash from the head of the UK statistics agency, who accused Johnson of a "clear misuse" of official statistics.
Theresa May was also forced to slap down her Cabinet colleague by insisting that her government is being “driven from the front”.
Meanwhile, former party leader William Hague has waded into the row by warning the Prime Minister she must unite her Cabinet or risk Jeremy Corbn becoming Prime Minister.
He said May must use her keynote Brexit speech in Florence on Friday to show the Government approach no longer “lacks co-ordination”.
Lord Hague - who also served as Foreign Secretary under David Cameron - painted in the starkest terms the consequences of open-air spats in the Cabinet.
“It is putting it a bit too politely to say, in the wake of Boris Johnson’s article in this newspaper on Saturday, that the approach of senior ministers to the Brexit negotiations appears to lack co-ordination,” he wrote in the Daily Telegraph.
“More bluntly, it is now 15 months since the referendum, and high time that all members of the Government were able to express themselves on this subject in the same way as each other, putting forward the same points, as part of an agreed plan.
“Hopefully, that happy circumstance will follow the speech the Prime Minister is due to give on the subject in Florence on Friday.
“If not, there will be no point Conservatives discussing who is going to be the Foreign Secretary, Chancellor or Prime Minister in the coming years, because Jeremy Corbyn will be Prime Minister, sitting in Number 10 with John McDonnell and Diane Abbott, completely ruining this country.”
According to the Times, May will try to bind Johnson to her vision for Brexit at a special Cabinet meeting on the eve of her major speech.
Johnson is reportedly against a years-long Brexit transition deal and paying large sums into the EU to access services such as the single market.
However other Cabinet ministers such as Chancellor Philip Hammond and Home Secretray Amber Rudd apparently back such an approach.
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