RUTH Davidson’s fragile truce with Boris Johnson could be all but broken after the Scots Tory chief urged the Prime Minister to back down in his negotiations with the EU.
The MSP said her boss’s plan to take the UK out of Europe on Halloween will lead to an “economic shock,” unless he can secure a deal.
But with Brussels and London unable to agree on the Northern Irish backstop that looks increasingly unlikely.
The comments will fuel speculation that Davidson will need to quit as her party’s leader in Holyrood, rather than back a Prime Minister whose “do or die” Brexit, she says, could be responsible for millions of people struggling.
READ MORE: Boris Johnson insists he's 'lost in admiration' for Ruth Davidson
Speaking at an event at the Edinburgh Fringe, she said: “There are as many opinions about what Brexit itself, and a no-deal Brexit, would do in terms of an economic shock, or not, to the country.
“Nobody really knows, and nobody will ever know, until after something’s been done.
“My own view is that, particularly after the issues that we had in 2008 with the worldwide economic crash, there’s quite a lot of people that would really struggle, even if there was a very mild economic shock to the United Kingdom, even if it was only a short-term one.
“There are millions of people in this country who have no savings, whose wages haven’t kept up and overtaken inflation in the last 10 years, who live two or three weeks out of every month in their overdraft as it is, and actually can’t afford an economic shock to this country.
“That’s one of the reasons I’m urging people to get round the table and have a compromise and make sure we get a deal across the line.”
She said Johnson’s preference was to agree a deal: “I want to support the Prime Minister in getting that deal, and we’ve got a very small window. So fingers crossed we can get it over the line.”
Davidson added: “We are in a situation where politics is becoming more strident, and compromise is seen as a dirty word or a sell-out or whatever.
“Actually compromise is how you get stuff done, and I think I would encourage everybody to compromise, whether it’s the Prime Minister, the Government, or the EU itself.”
Meanwhile, Michael Gove accused Europe of not wanting to talk.
After a meeting of the government’s Brexit “war cabinet”, he said: “We need a new approach and we stand ready to engage with the European Union, to negotiate in good faith to make sure that we can have friendly relationship in the future.
“We will put all our energy into making sure that we can secure that good deal but at the moment it is the EU that seems to be saying they are not interested.
“They are simply saying, ‘No, we don’t want to talk’. I think that is wrong and sad. It is not in Europe’s interests.”
But Leo Varadkar, the Irish prime minister, who warned that there could be no deal without legal protection to avoid a hard border in Ireland said this was not accurate.
“Our position is that the withdrawal agreement including the backstop is closed. But there is always room for talks and negotiations,” he said.
“We can certainly make changes to the political declaration and we have demonstrated before that it is possible to offer clarifications.”
The Taoiseach also restated his invitation to Johnson to come to Dublin for talks.
He said that he was not resigned to a no-deal Brexit. “I don’t accept it’s unavoidable. There are many ways no-deal can be avoided. I am certainly not fatalistic about that,” he said.
Meanwhile, Jeremy Corbyn said he would call for a no-confidence vote in the Tory government at “the appropriate very early time” as a means on stopping a No Deal Brexit.
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