Delivering a speech to an audience in India, UK’s former Foreign Minister Boris Johnson likened anti-Brexit officials in Westminster to Christopher to those who said “Columbus would sail off the edge of the world.”
In his criticism of scaremongering by Remainers and Brexit objectors, Johnson said that politicians in Britain are still struggling to understand what Brexit really means.
That is despite the well-known phrase introduced and often used by the Prime Minister Theresa May, following the 2016 referendum — “Brexit means Brexit.”
Johnson, who was on the forefront of the Leave.EU campaign in the lead up to the 2016 vote when regaining control of the country was a driving factor in gaining public support, said that “foreigners” running the EU was not the problem.
“My objection to the EU was not that it was run by foreigners. The problem is we don’t really know who is running it,” Johnson said, referring to the complex institutional framework of the European Union.
“I couldn’t tell you who they are, or what they do or how they came by their jobs or how they may be removed from office. I have no idea how to kick those particular b******s out — I’m not saying they are b*******s. But millions and millions of people in the UK have no idea how the system works. It’s completely cut off to them,” Johnson said.
“I think that the anger in the population would be so intense and the tedium — people would be driven absolutely round the bend by the idea of having to vote on this thing again.”
Staunch Brexiteer, Johnson disagreed that the “UK is going to stay in [the EU] or that the UK should stay in.”
Britain is set to exit from the EU bloc on 29 March, 2019, unless the government requests an extension of the deadline, which may last as long as several months.
In this case, Britain will still be a member of the EU during the European Parliament elections in May.
The European Council President Donald Tusk spoke about foreign meddling in European Parliament elections on Tuesday, warning against hostile foreign meddling.
“There are external anti-European forces which are seeking — openly or secretly — to influence the democratic choices of the Europeans,” Tusk told the media, adding that the “Leave” result in Britain’s 2016 Brexit referendum was one such example.