Senior Conservative Party members in Britain have intensified their attacks on British Prime Minister David Cameron with an open letter accusing him of misleading the public over immigration.
Former London mayor Boris Johnson and British Secretary of State for Justice Michael Gove used a Sunday Times letter to say that Cameron’s goal of lowering immigration cannot be achieved while Britain remains in the EU.
The attack on Cameron intensifies the party’s internal conflict ahead of a June 23 referendum on whether Britain should remain in the 28-nation bloc.
Photo: EPA
Johnson and Gove said Cameron had broken promises to lower immigration, corroding “public trust in politics.”
They are leading the “Out” campaign in opposition to party leader Cameron.
Cameron’s office called the letter “a transparent attempt” to distract voters from the economic costs of leaving the EU.
A British exit from the EU would plunge the two sides into a messy divorce and force them build a new relationship after a marriage of more than 40 years.
The procedure for a country to leave the EU is built into the bloc’s treaties.
Article 50 of the 2009 Lisbon Treaty says that “any member state may decide to withdraw from the union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements.”
In the event of the vote next month, Cameron has said that the British government would “straight away” trigger Article 50, beginning the negotiation process to leave.
There is a two-year time period to negotiate the arrangements for exit under Article 50, with a “Brexit” then happening automatically if there is no deal for the new form of relationship.
In practice, it could take a lot longer. Britain and the EU could agree to delay the exit until a better deal has been reached, although a delay must be approved unanimously.
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has said Britain would be “a third party, who we won’t be bending over backwards for.”
The final deal would then have to be approved by a qualified majority of the Council of the EU, which groups the member states, after the approval of the European Parliament.
The British government said in a report in February that it could take up to 10 years to tie up all the loose ends.
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