A no-deal Brexit would betray Britain’s decision to leave the European Union, former finance minister Philip Hammond said Wednesday, as he slammed Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s “wrecking” approach to negotiations.
“No-deal would be a betrayal of the 2016 referendum result. It must not happen,” he wrote in The Times newspaper.The British parliament three times rejected the withdrawal agreement May negotiated with Brussels, with many MPs troubled by the “backstop” — a mechanism that would keep the UK in EU customs arrangements to prevent a hard border on the island of Ireland.
Hammond said a no-deal Brexit would also threaten the United Kingdom’s integrity as it risked collapsing the peace accords in Northern Ireland and triggering a referendum on the province leaving the UK and joining the Republic of Ireland, an EU member state. He also said US talk of a “great trade deal” meant a trade deal that was great for them, opening up Britain to US produce that would “destroy British agriculture”.