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Michael Gove has insisted the UK will leave the EU by October 31, despite Boris Johnson writing to the EU to ask for a Brexit extension.
Asked if he could guarantee that the UK would leave the EU by Halloween, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster said: “Yes, that’s our determined policy.”
He told Sky News’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday: “We know that the EU want us to leave, we know that we have a deal that allows us to leave.”
“We are going to leave by October 31st. We have the means and the ability to do so and people who – yesterday we had some people who voted for delay, voted explicitly to try to frustrate this process and to drag it out.
“I think actually the mood in the country is clear and the Prime Minister’s determination is absolute and I am with him in this, we must leave by October 31st.”
Asked if the letter to the EU requesting an extension would be withdrawn in the coming days if Parliament backs the Government’s Brexit deal, Michael Gove said: “Yes.
“If we vote to leave, we get the legislation through, then there is no extension – October 31 is within sight.
“I think it would be wrong for people to assume as some do that EU leaders want this to drag out.”
It comes as Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab told BBC’s The Andrew Marr Show that he believes the Government can get Boris Johnson’s deal through Parliament.
He said: “We seem to have the numbers in the House of Commons. A lot of people say ‘get this done and move on’.”
Mr Gove was also asked if he had placed money on whether the UK will leave the EU on October 31.
He said:
MP David Lammy hit back at Mr Gove for his comment, saying: “Brexit is all just a game to these Tories.
“Making private bets with each other as they gamble away our country’s wealth, our children’s rights, and Britain’s standing in the world.”
Mr Gove’s comments came as Mr Johnson was dealt a major blow in the Commons yesterday after MPs approved the Letwin amendment, which forced him to seek a Brexit extension.
The House of Commons Twitter account posted saying that the Government now “must ask for an extension of Article 50 under the Benn Act and set out how it intends to proceed”.
But Mr Johnson distanced himsef from the legally required request as hegot a senior diplomat to send an unsigned photocopy of the call by MPs to delay withdrawal from the bloc.
In a second note to European Council president Donald Tusk, the Prime Minister said a Brexit extension would be “deeply corrosive”.
In response, shadow chancellor John McDonnell accused the Prime Minister of “behaving a bit like a spoilt brat” over Brexit.
Speaking on Sky News’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday he said: “He may well be in contempt of Parliament or the courts themselves because he’s clearly trying to undermine the first letter and not signing the letter.
“He’s behaving a bit like a spoilt brat. Parliament made a decision, he should abide by it and this idea that you send another letter contradicting the first, I think it flies in the face of what both Parliament and the courts have decided.”
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