Remain ringleader Lord Heseltine calls No-Deal Brexit a ‘grotesque act of national self harm’ and brands Dominic Cummings a ‘revolutionary menace’ as rebels plot to thwart Boris Johnson’s plans to exit EU
- The former Deputy Prime Minister has been an ardent Europhile his whole career
- Lord Heseltine called a No Deal Brexit ‘a grotesque act of national self harm’
- He called Boris Johnson’s top aide Dominic Cummings a ‘revolutionary menace’
- A minister said the arch-Remainer had ‘never quite reconciled’ to Brexit idea
A former Conservative deputy prime minister has insisted that for the government to go ahead with a No Deal Brexit would be the ‘most grotesque act of national self harm committed in peacetime by a British government’.
Longtime Europhile Michael Heseltine argued this morning the Prime Minister had no democratic mandate to take the UK out of the EU without a deal.
He also reiterated a broadside against top Johnson aide Dominic Cummings whom he called a ‘revolutionary menace’ in a letter to a Sunday newspaper.
He said on Sky’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday show: ‘There is an atmosphere of total indecision and ineffectiveness at the heart of government.
‘Because, let’s be frank, there is no parliamentary majority for what this government is threatening to do.
‘Because this government is completely obsessed with the preposterous idea that we should leave Europe without a deal, the whole of the agenda for running this country, for modernising this country, is on hold.’
On Cummings, he added: ‘We’ve got this guy, who is now in direct contact with the British media, briefing them on policies, scathingly attacking members of the House of Commons, and parading himself as the mastermind behind the government.
‘That is an intolerable position for democracy.
‘It is absolutely central that parliament should be able to call to account people who represent them as ministers, and at the the moment we’re now being told by a particular figure, who’s proud of it, that he’s more or less running the show.’
It comes after he and former Commons Speaker Betty Boothroyd co-authored a letter to the Sunday Times in which the peers said: ‘Both of us know that trying to play parliament against the people is not only wrong but dangerous.
Speaking from his home in Oxfordshire Lord Heseltine, who last faced the voters 22 years ago, insisted Mr Cummings prominence despite being unelected was ‘intolerable’ for democracy
Lord Heseltine branded no deal Brexit ‘the most grotesque act of national self-harm committed in peacetime by a British government’ and called Dominic Cummings a ‘revolutionary menace’
‘The same cannot be said of Britain’s new prime minister and the self-styled “revolutionary” menace represented by Dominic Cummings, whom he has installed in Downing Street.
‘Boris Johnson wants to bypass both people and parliament to force a scorched-earth Brexit on our country.
‘He wants to inflict on all of us the most grotesque act of national self-harm committed in peacetime by a British government.’
The pair called on Parliamentarians to ‘try to defend a democracy for which previous generations fought and died’.
Speaking later on the programme, policing minister Kit Malthouse, who served as deputy London mayor under Johnson, dismissed the criticism.
‘Obviously, there’s a lot of hyperbole being thrown about as we approach the date of 31 October,’ he said.
‘In the end even people like Lord Heseltine, great figures from the past, who have never quite reconciled themselves to the idea that we’re going to leave the European Union, are going to have to focus on the fact that that’s what the British people commanded us to do, and that’s what the government is committing to do at the end of October.’
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