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May Aims to Sell Brexit Plan in National Tour Amid Pressure From Fellow Tories

The Prime Minister is to spend the rest of the summer trying to neutralize the challenge to her leadership laid out by former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson who used his resignation speech to say that Brexit needs to be “saved.”
Sputnik

British Prime Minister Theresa May is reportedly set to promote her blueprint for Brexit laid out at Chequers to the Conservative Party's grassroots supporters as her pursuit of a so-called "Soft Brexit" with the European Union comes under continuous attack from within her own party.

Polling carried out in the immediate aftermath of the Chequers agreement showed nearly 60 percent of traditional Conservative voters are unhappy with the Prime Minister's performance in the Brexit negotiations with Brussels.

Former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson used his resignation speech in Parliament to attack the government's declared Brexit process which he claimed directly contradicts the promises Mrs. May made in her 2017 Lancaster House speech to fully sever institutional ties with the continent.

'We Want Special Deal With US and Should Be Going For Hard Brexit'– British MP
Maintaining a "common rulebook" on goods and services and creating a shared customs area with the 27 nation bloc would, in Mr. Johnson's view, constrain Britain's ability to strike independent trade agreements with countries around the world such as the United States, China, and Commonwealth nations.

The former Foreign Secretary's increasingly vocal opposition has also served to keep alive rumors of an impending leadership challenge against Mrs. May.

Conservative voters accounted for the majority of the "Leave" result to the United Kingdom's June 2016 EU membership referendum, with consistent polling showing them to be largely in favour of a "Hard Brexit," pulling Britain out of all EU institutions, even in preference to Northern Ireland remaining a part of the United Kingdom. 

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