UK PM's Brexit blueprint blasted by Johnson

Prime Minister Theresa May's Brexit strategy means disaster for Britain, her former foreign secretary Boris Johnson said, as critics at home and officials in Brussels stepped up their opposition to her plans for how to leave the European Union.

With under two months before Britain and the EU want to agree a deal to end over 40 years of union, May is struggling to sell what she calls her business-friendly Brexit to her own party and across a divided country.

The prospect that she could fail to reach a deal that would carry parliament at home, and that Britain could potentially crash out of the EU in March with no deal in place at all, has worried financial markets.

“In adopting the Chequers proposals, we have gone into battle with the white flag fluttering over our leading tank. If we continue on this basis we will throw away most of the advantages of Brexit,” Johnson wrote in the Daily Telegraph newspaper yesterday. “People can see Chequers means disaster.”

The plan, named for the prime minister's country residence where it was agreed by the cabinet in July, calls for free trade between Britain and the EU in manufactured and agricultural goods, with Britain accepting regulations over traded goods that align with EU rules.

The government says it is the only way to achieve Brexit without harming the economy. But opponents on both sides of the Brexit debate have criticised it for offering either too sharp a rupture with the EU, or a break that is not clean enough.

Johnson quit May's cabinet days after the Chequers plan was approved.

 “We will remain in the EU taxi; but this time locked in the boot, with absolutely no say on the destination,” he wrote in yesterday's column.