Robert Peston Robert Peston

Are the Conservatives now officially the no-deal Brexit party?

With just a week to go before the result is announced of the election to choose the new Tory leader, and our new PM, Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt are shape-shifting into each other.

On Brexit Hunt is adopting more and more of Johnson’s rhetoric about the need to keep open the option of a no-deal Brexit.

And in Monday night’s Sun debate, both of them made a new commitment that makes no deal the most likely outcome – they both said they wanted to scrap the so-called backstop, the mechanism for keeping open the border on the island of Ireland.

Johnson said that putting a time limit on the backstop, or acquiring a unilateral right for the UK to withdraw from the backstop, would no longer be an acceptable reform.

The backstop had to go altogether.

Robert Peston
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Robert Peston
Robert Peston is Political Editor of ITV News and host of the weekly political discussion show Peston. His articles originally appeared on his ITV News blog.

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