Boris Johnson has been told to stop playing a “stupid blame game” by European Council President Donald Tusk.
In an angry tweet directed at the prime minister on Tuesday morning, Tusk said the “future” of Europe and the
UK was at stake, as the chances of a no-deal
Brexit appeared to increase.
On Tuesday morning, following a phone call between Johnson and
Angela Merkel, Downing Street accused accused
Brussels of making it “impossible” for the UK to leave with a deal.
But Tusk hit back, accusing No.10 of trying to pin the blame for no-deal on the EU..@BorisJohnson, what’s at stake is not winning some stupid blame game. At stake is the future of Europe and the UK as well as the security and interests of our people. You don’t want a deal, you don’t want an extension, you don’t want to revoke, quo vadis?— Donald Tusk (@eucopresident) October 8, 2019A No.10 source told several broadcasters that Merkel had made clear that a deal was “overwhelmingly unlikely”, unless the UK accepted that the
Irish Republic must at least have a veto on Northern
Ireland leaving the customs union – a position the
British government has rejected.
A German government spokesperson confirmed the call took place but would not confirm Downing Street’s account.
“As usual, we do not report from such confidential conversations,” the spokesperson told HuffPost UK.
Keir Starmer, Labour’s shadow Brexit secretary, said the briefing by No.10 was a “cynical attempt” to “sabotage the negotiations”.
“Boris Johnson will never take responsibility for his own failure to put forward a credible deal. His strategy from day one has been for a no-deal Brexit,” he said.
A source within the group of Tory rebels who were kicked out of the party for voting to block no-deal told HuffPost UK: “It’s now clear what Dominic Cummings’ Plan B is: put on a show, plausible enough to those who want to believe it, that you are genuinely pursuing a deal. Then when that inevitably fails, blame the EU, and use it as justification for no-deal, claiming all along that you made a ‘fair and reasonable’ offer.
“But there is nothing fair or reasonable about the offer from No10. It is a sham ‘deal’.
“No10 spent the Summer preparing for an October election, and when that plan failed they rustled up something that looked vaguely coherent to a casual observer, and gave the appearance of ‘pursuing a deal’, but that they knew would never be acceptable since it clearly breached a number of red lines for the EU.
“No.10’s focus is not on negotiations, it’s on blame. They want to drag the country into a No Deal Brexit - blaming the EU for not engaging with their ‘deal’. But in reality there is no ‘deal’.”
The UK is due to leave the EU on October 31. Johnson has said he will take the country out with or without a deal.
But thanks to the Benn Act, passed by MPs opposed to no-deal, he will be forced to ask for an extension to the Article 50 process if a deal is not reached by October 19.
On Monday night, a No.10 source told The Spectator that the Conservative party was preparing to fight a snap general
election on a “get Brexit done immediately” platform with a no-deal exit in order to “marginalise the Brexit Party”.
Amber Rudd, who resigned from the cabinet and the Tory party last month, said she believed the source was Johnson’s chief adviser Dominic Cummings. “It sounds angry and desperate. And the language that is used, I do not believe should be the language of a UK government,” she told
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