UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Thursday that the opportunity of not reaching a post-Brexit commerce cope with the European Union by the tip of 2020 “simply will not happen”.
PM Johnson has vowed to take Britain out of the EU by the end of January and not to extend a post-Brexit transition period due to end in Dec. 2020, something critics say does not leave enough time to reach a new trade deal.
During a visit to a factory in the central UK, Johnson said, “It’s very much in their (the EU’s) interest to do a deal with us and I have no doubt that they will and if you say ‘can I absolutely guarantee that I can get a deal’? I think I can”.
Last week, UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn held up what he claimed were 451 pages of previously secret documents that proved Johnson was seeking to put the National Health Service (NHS) on the table in a post-Brexit trade deal.
The UK goes to the polls on December 12, with Johnson hoping to secure a majority to be able to push through his divorce deal to take the country out of the European Union.
The Brexit issue is threatening to hurt Labour in its traditional working-class heartlands, which mostly voted to leave the EU.
Johnson came under fire for alleged racism in his previous news articles and also for not releasing a report into Russian interference in the 2016 Brexit referendum, which he dismissed as “Bermuda Triangle stuff”.
Johnson is hopeful that the December 12 election will break the long impasse over Brexit and give his party a majority so he can extricate Britain from the European Union.