UK leadership race frontrunner Boris Johnson insisted Friday he would never raise the “white flag” of surrender and plead for a further delay of Brexit if no EU deal was ready by October 31. Johnson said London could finally get what it wanted once it made abundantly clear to Brussels that it could walk away without a deal. The foot-dragging prompted frustrated Britons on both sides of the Brexit divide to punish the two big parties in European elections last month. Johnson said his Conservatives and the main opposition Labour faced an “existential threat” from populist Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party and the pro-EU Liberal Democrats. But the solution he aired for resolving the Brexit crisis was one Brussels has repeatedly rejected in the past.

Source: Punch June 14, 2019 16:05 UTC