(Bloomberg) -- Boris Johnson toughened his Brexit rhetoric with a "do or die" pledge to leave the European Union on Oct. 31 as Jeremy Hunt, his underdog rival to become U.K. prime minister, battled to persuade Tory party members the strategy is flawed.
The front-runner challenged Hunt to match his commitment to leave “come what may” in a letter posted on Twitter on Tuesday. Hunt countered that Johnson’s insistence on the deadline could lead to a general election and a catastrophic defeat for the party at the hands of Jeremy Corbyn’s opposition Labour Party.
“October 31 come hell or high water is a fake deadline, because it’s more likely to trip us into a general election before we’ve delivered Brexit,” Hunt told BBC TV on Tuesday evening. “That would hand the keys to Jeremy Corbyn and then we’d have no Brexit at all.”
With the contest between them just five days old, the two men traded blows Tuesday, ramping up their campaigns as time ticks away before July 6, when Conservative Party members start receiving ballot papers to vote for Theresa May’s successor.
‘Morosity and Gloom’
Johnson’s hardening of his pledge, after a rocky start to his campaign, came after a YouGov poll showed 59% of party members say the new prime minister should be prepared to leave without a deal in October if negotiations fail. Some 24% want him to head straight for a no-deal split without trying more talks.
“A bit of positive energy would help, frankly. I’ve never seen such morosity and gloom from a government,” Johnson told TalkRadio. “For three years we’ve been sitting around wrapped in defeatism telling the British public that they can’t do this or that. It is pathetic, it’s absolutely pathetic.”
Johnson said he wants to negotiate a new divorce deal with the bloc -- without the controversial Irish backstop -- and get it done by the deadline. If that’s not possible -- as the EU has repeatedly said it isn’t -- he’d seek a standstill agreement with the EU, on the basis of Article 24 of the GATT, he said.
Read More:
- Why Ireland’s Border Commands Its Own Brexit Backstop: QuickTake
- Why Article 24 Is No Soft Landing for No-Deal Brexit: QuickTake
The EU has already said it won’t contemplate mini agreements to soften the blow of a hard exit and says the U.K.’s options are either the divorce accord, including the Irish backstop and the financial settlement, or the chaos of no-deal. The World Trade Organization and the U.K.’s own trade secretary, Liam Fox, himself a Brexiteer, have also said Article 24 wouldn’t work.
If the first two plans fail, then Johnson said the country must prepare for a hard split. But a majority of members of Parliament oppose crashing out without an agreement, and lawmakers from Johnson’s own party are working across the aisle to find ways to stop it -- with some prepared to bring down the government and trigger an election.
‘About The Personality’
The plan is doomed because the EU wouldn’t trust Johnson to renegotiate, Hunt said as he shifted emphasis on to the personality of his rival. Johnson’s campaign has been struggling to shake-off questions about his suitability as premier after police were called to his girlfriend’s London apartment last week by neighbors who said they were concerned about a loud late night argument.
“Who is the person we trust as prime minister to go to Brussels and bring back that deal? It’s about the personality of our prime minister,” Hunt said in an interview with BBC TV. “If you choose someone where there’s no trust, there’s going to be no negotiation, no deal.”
Hunt also said he would leave without a deal “with a heavy heart” if there was no prospect of a better agreement with the bloc, but backed himself to reach a new accord.
He taunted Johnson over his reluctance to appear in TV debates, accusing him of hiding and being “disrespectful” to Tory party members. “Leadership is about showing up,” Hunt said in a Twitter question-and-answer session Tuesday evening at the time when the two men would have been debating on Sky TV if Johnson hadn’t pulled out.
