Page 10 QQQ Daily Mail, Tuesday, August 13, 2019Will Boris jet off to
meet Macron and
Merkel next week?
By John Stevens
Deputy Political EditorBORIS Johnson could fly to
Paris and Berlin next week to
deliver his Brexit demands to
Emmanuel Macron and Angela
Merkel in person.
Downing Street is considering
making the visits ahead of a G
summit so the PM’s debut on the
world stage is not overshadowed by
rows over leaving the EU.
It had previously been suggested
that Mr Johnson would not visit
European capitals before the G7 in
Biarritz, France, on August 24.
Despite the trips, government
sources played down the chances of
a Brexit breakthrough.
Downing Street expects the EU to
wait until after they have seen
whether rebel MPs are successful in
their attempts to block No Deal.
Mr Johnson’s team have identified
September 9 – a week after MPs
return from their summer break –
as the most likely date for a parlia-
mentary showdown.
Shadow home secretary Diane
Abbott yesterday refused to give
details of when or if Labour wasplanning a no confidence motion.
She told Radio 4’s Today pro-
gramme: ‘We are talking to all of the
other parties in Parliament and if
we move for a vote of no confidence
we’ll want to do it with confidence
that we can win it.’
The Prime Minister’s official
spokesman said Mr Johnson
remained determined to leave the
EU with a deal.
He said: ‘He believes a deal is in
the UK’s and the EU’s best inter-
ests and he has said he will be ener-
getic in pursuit of a deal.
‘We very much want a deal but
we’re also clear about what needs
to be achieved in order to secure
that.’ The spokesman added: ‘He
has held a number of conversations
with EU leaders, so has the Prime
Minister’s sherpa David Frost.
‘We are also making very detailed
preparations at home to ensure the
UK is ready to leave the EU in all
circumstances on 31 October.’ful exit from the European Union’
and offer any help. Speaking about
the deal between the two countries,
he raised the prospect of it being
agreed ‘in pieces’. He said: ‘We want
to move very quickly. We wish we
could have moved further along in
this with the prior government. We
were ready to negotiate. We are
ready to negotiate now.’
Mr Bolton said the countries could
concentrate on areas they can agree
on first, pointing to financial serv-
ices, manufacturing sectors and
industry. He said: ‘The idea of doing
it in pieces rather than waiting for
the whole thing is not unprece-
dented. I think here we see the
importance and urgency of doing as
much as we can agree on as rapidly
as possible because of the impend-
ing October 31 exit date.’
Asked whether piecemeal trade
agreements like this were allowed‘We want to move
very quickly’US of fers trade deals
‘within year of Brexit’
President’s key aide says Britain is ‘the first in line’
DONALD Trump’s national
security adviser last night
declared that Britain and
the US could do trade deals
within a year of Brexit.
John Bolton declared the US
will support a No Deal Brexit
‘enthusiastically’.
He said Britain was ‘first in line’
for an agreement and insisted Mr
Trump wanted to ‘expedite’ a
deal by locking down different
sectors before reaching a more
comprehensive arrangement.
He also took a swipe at ‘elites’
in the EU who, he claimed,
wanted to ‘make the peasants
vote again and again until they
get it right’. His comments came
after he met with Boris Johnson
in Downing Street as part of a
two-day trip to London.
Speaking at a briefing in May-
fair, he said: ‘Britain’s success is a
statement about democratic rule
and constitutional government.
We see a successful exit as beingvery much in our interest. I
thought both President Trump
and I were leavers before there
were leavers.’
Attacking the EU, he added:
‘The fashion in the European
Union when the people vote the
wrong way from the way that the
elites want to go, is to make the
peasants vote again and again
until they get it right.There was a
vote, everybody knew what theissue was ... the result is the way
it was. That is democracy.’
Mr Bolton is the most senior
Trump official to visit since Mr
Johnson became PM on July 24. He
said the relationship between the
two leaders had got off to a ‘roaring
start’ and they had already spoken
five or six times on the phone.
He said the main purpose of his
trip was to express President
Trump’s ‘desire to see a success-By Larisa Brown
Defence and Security Editor
Voters ready
to suspend
Parliament to
get out of EU
MORE than half of the public
back Boris Johnson delivering
Brexit by any means neces-
sary, according to a poll.
A total of 54 per cent of
adults think Parliament should
be suspended if necessary to
prevent MPs stopping a No
Deal Brexit. The ComRes sur-
vey for The Daily Telegraph
will be a boost for the Prime
Minister who has promised to
leave the EU without a deal if
he has to by October 31.
Pollsters surveyed 2,011 vot-
ers. They were asked if they
agreed the Prime Minister
‘needs to deliver Brexit by any
means, including suspending
Parliament if necessary, in
order to prevent MPs from
stopping it’. A total of 54 per
cent of respondents agreed
and 46 per cent disagreed.
However, if those who said
they didn’t know what they
thought are included, 44 per
cent agreed, 38 per cent disa-
greed and 18 per cent said
they did not know.
The poll also saw the Tory
lead widening over the Brexit
Party to 15 percentage points
(31 per cent to 16) since Mr
Johnson became premier.under WTO rules, Mr Bolton said:
‘Our trade negotiators seem to think
it is.’ He said a trade deal wouldn’t
necessarily take years, adding that
the UK will be ‘first in line’ for a
trade deal with the US.
He said: ‘A prior American presi-
dent said that if the UK left the EU,
it would go to the back of the queue
on trade deals. To be clear, in the
Trump administration, Britain’s
constantly at the front of the trade
queue, or line as we say.’
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn
tweeted: ‘The Tories rolling out the
red carpet for the US administra-
tion’s most hawkish member is the
latest warning sign of Johnson
putting Britain in hock to Trump’s
USA. The UK in Trump’s pocket is a
threat to the NHS, the environment
and our peace and security.’