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Prime Minister Boris Johnson said yesterday some British lawmakers hoping to block Brexit were engaged in “terrible” collaboration with the European Union by undermining London’s negotiating hand and so making no deal more likely.
Hours after senior lawmakers said they would seek to prevent any attempt to ignore parliament over Brexit, Johnson used a question-and-answer session on Facebook to attack them.
“There is a terrible kind of collaboration as it were going on between those who think they can block Brexit in parliament and our European friends,” Johnson, who has been hailed by the United States president, Donald Trump, as “Britain’s Trump”, said on Facebook.
“We need our European friends to compromise and the more they think that there’s a chance that Brexit can be blocked in parliament, the more adamant they are in sticking to their position,” Johnson said. Johnson’s use of the word “collaborator” has historical echoes for Britons given the use of that epithet for people who cooperated with Nazi Germany during World War Two.
“Shameful language of fascism and authoritarianism from liar Johnson + unelected advisors – plain and simple. European neighbours are our friends not ‘enemy’ to ‘collaborate’ with,” Labour lawmaker Stephen Doughty said on Twitter.
Johnson’s comments followed remarks by former finance minister Philip Hammond that parliament will block a no-deal Brexit if unelected people behind Johnson try to wrench Britain out on Oct. 31 without agreement.
Meanwhile, A US-UK trade deal will not get through Congress if Brexit undermines the Good Friday Agreement, the Speaker of the US House of Representatives has said.
Democrat Nancy Pelosi, whose party controls the House, said the UK’s exit from the EU could not be allowed to endanger the Irish peace deal.
Her comments came after the US national security adviser said the UK would be “first in line” for a trade deal. John Bolton spoke after meeting Prime Minister Boris Johnson in London.
The reimposition of frontier controls between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland if the UK leaves the EU without mutual agreement on 31 October, a so-called “hard Brexit” is seen as a threat to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which ended decades of bloodshed in Northern Ireland.
