Even Remainer MP can demolish EU’s main attack line - 'we haven't been silent on Brexit'
LORD Chancellor David Gauke trashed the European Union’s claim that Britain is still yet to outline its stance on Brexit and said he "doesn't accept" the idea that the UK has been silent on its plans for Brexit.
Remainer MP: UK has not been silent in Brexit negotiations
Secretary of State for Justice David Gauke insisted he does not accept the EU’s demands said Britain has already made clear its plans for Brexit.
Following a meeting with Brexit Secretary David Davis in February, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier said the “time has come to make a choice” and Britain must make its view for Brexit clear.
But speaking on ITV’s Peston on Sunday, Mr Gauke said Britain has not been silent on Brexit. He said: “I accept that there is more that we will need to set out.
“There is more that will be determined in the process of negotiations. But this idea that we have been silent - I don’t accept at all.”
This idea that we have been silent on Brexit - I don’t accept at all
Mr Gauke referred to the Prime Minister Theresa May’s Lancaster House and Florence speeches where she set out “a lot of details in terms of where we want to go”.
Prime Minister Theresa May has repeatedly said Brexit will mean leaving the single market and customs union.
Speaking to the BBC, she said: "What the British people voted for is for us to take back control of our money, our borders and our laws and that's exactly what we are going to do.”
Ministers backing a clean break from Brussels, including Boris Johnson, David Davis and Liam Fox are to join Mrs May in delivering keynote speeches outlining “Britain’s road map to Brexit” over the coming weeks.
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Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar claimed his administrations “still don’t know what the British government wants Brexit to mean”.
But David Davis said the Government has made its Brexit aims “perfectly clear”.
He said: ”We have already published a great deal about our proposals, in terms of what the customs arrangements will be, what the other arrangements will be with respect to being outside the union.
“We have said in terms we want a comprehensive free trade agreement and we want a customs agreement and to make that as frictionless as possible, to make as much trade as currently exists as free as possible, while still giving ourselves the opportunity to make free trade deals with the rest of the world.
He added: “It is perfectly clear what we want to do.”