The Minister of Foreign Relations, Boris Johnson, one of Brexit’s biggest supporters and faces of the campaign, has resigned just a few hours after Theresa May’s cabinet secretary, David Davis announced his own dismissal. In this resignation letter, Boris Johnson alerted that “the Brexit dream is dying”. According to him, Theresa May’s plans may mean that the United Kingdom will become a “EU” colony.
Just like David Davis, Johnson attended a meeting in Chequers last week, when the prime minister Theresa May believed she had been able to unite the British government’s ministers. However, any hope of peace has been broken within the first 48 hours, when both representatives decided to go against the rules of collective responsibility, in which ministers are obliged to be lined up with the government.
In his letter, Johnson alerts that the Brexiteers’ dreams of a Great Britain focused outside Europe were being “suffocated by unnecessary insecurity”, and that the negotiators were being sent with “flyaway white flags”. He carried on: “the British government spent decades arguing against this or that EU rule. Now we are in a ridiculous position to affirm that we have to accept a certain amount of EU rules, without changing them, because it is essential to our economic health – and in a moment when we do not have any capacity to change these laws. In this aspect, we really are moving towards a colony status.”
Johnson broke the protocol by releasing his own resignation letter, instead of waiting for it to be published together with the prime minister’s reply, as usual. Earlier, a Downing Street spokesman announced: “this afternoon, the prime minister has just accepted Boris Johnson’s resignation as Minister of Foreign Relations. His substitute will be announced soon. The prime minister would like to thank Boris Johnson for his service.”
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