Boris Johnson has remained defiant he will not delay the UK’s departure from the EU, giving his strongest hint to date that he might provoke another EU member state into blocking a further Brexit delay.
As the Conservative party gathered for its annual conference on Sunday, the prime minister indicated that if he was forced by MPs to request another Brexit extension through the Benn Act — legislation that would force him to avoid a no-deal — other EU members might seek to expel the UK if it became unco-operative.
“It is certainly true that other EU countries also don’t want this thing to keep dragging on. They don’t want the UK to remain in the EU truculent and mutinous and in a limbo and not wishing to co-operate in a way they would like,” he told the BBC.