JEREMY Hunt is to look to the likes of Ruth Davidson to try to help him solve Brexit.
Revealing more details of his Brexit delivery plan yesterday, the Foreign Secretary said he would pull together a negotiating team which included members of the Scottish Tories but not the Scottish Government.
Hunt said the team, which would also include members of the DUP, the ERG, and the Welsh Tories, would be responsible for producing an “alternative exit deal, based on the alternative arrangements proposals, that can command a majority in the House of Commons and addresses, seriously and forensically, legitimate EU and Irish concerns about the Irish border and the integrity of the single market”.
This plan, he promised, will be published by the end of August.
If, after three weeks of negotiations, it looked as if Brussels still wasn’t willing to renegotiate, Hunt said that he too, like rival Boris Johnson, would back a Halloween hard Brexit.
Johnson has already promised to take the UK out of the EU “do or die” by the October 31 deadline.
READ MORE: We asked Johnson if he'd prioritise Brexit or the Union and received no response
The SNP compared the two men to the heroes of the movie Thelma and Louise where, at the end, the protagonists drive their car off a cliff.
Hunt told a gathering in Westminster: “We have built up headroom – around £26 billion of headroom – which makes it possible to make the commitments I’m making today.”
He added: “It is important that the EU knows that we will do what it takes to make a success of a no-deal Brexit.
“We won’t blink as a country.
He continued: “That no-deal Brexit is not going to be an opportunity for them to successfully turn the screws on our country.
“I will start engaging with the EU straight away, throughout August.
“Then, when we have published our plan for a deal we think we can get through Parliament by the end of August, we will start formal negotiations in September.
“There is a hard deadline in what I have said; by the end of September, I, as prime minister, will make a judgment as to whether there is a realistic prospect of a deal that can get through Parliament in the short term. And if my judgment is that is not the case, talks will stop and we will put our heads down and focus on no deal.”
Tory Party members begin voting next week, with the winner announced on July 23.
Theresa May is set to give her final Prime Minister’s Questions on July 24 before heading over to Buckingham Palace to hand in her notice.
The two candidates have also been warned by Chancellor Phillip Hammond to ca’canny with their spending pledges.
He told the Tory leadership contenders that the “fiscal firepower” that he has stocked up will be needed to pay for a no-deal Brexit.
Taking to Twitter, Hammond said: “The ‘fiscal firepower’ we have built up in case of a no-deal Brexit will only be available for extra spending if we leave with an orderly transition.
“If not, it will all be needed to plug the hole a no-deal Brexit will make in the public finances.”
The SNP MP Kirsty Blackman said Hunt and Johnson were “locked in a no-deal Brexit bidding war to try and win over the Tory faithful – and it is ordinary people who are set to pay the price”.
She added: “Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt have become the Thelma and Louise of Brexit – it beggars belief that both are prepared to drive the UK economy off a Brexit cliff-edge, regardless of the catastrophic consequences for the economy and people’s jobs.
“Even Chancellor Philip Hammond admits that Tory plans for a no-deal Brexit would waste billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money, plugging the huge hole it would create in public finances and leaving the UK poorer and worse off as a result.”.
Meanwhile, Johnson was heckled during a visit to a Kent garden centre. A passing woman told him: “Good luck with your preposterous ideas.”
She then added, in reference to Jo Johnson, the pro-Remain MP “it’s a shame your brother’s not running”, while a man, who appeared to be with her, called the former foreign secretary “crazy”.
Johnson brushed it off replying: “Thank you very much.”
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