Sajid Javid Refuses to Rule Out Possibility of No-Deal Brexit

He was repeatedly asked on Thursday whether there was a possibility the UK could leave with no deal at the end of 2020. He said the chances of that were “extremely remote” but dodged several opportunities to rule it out.

He claimed the outline of a free trade agreement had already been worked out, saying: “By the end of 2020, we will have agreed and finalized the trade deal, a very ambitious, deep, comprehensive free trade agreement. And we will get that done also by the end of 2020, The Guardian reported.

“In the time that we’ve been negotiating over the last 100 days or so, it wasn’t just the exit agreement ... We have also negotiated and worked and agreed the outline of the ambitious free trade agreement.

“There is not a single doubt in my mind that it can be agreed within months, and we can get it through parliament by 2020.”

Asked what tariffs the car industry would pay under such a deal, Javid said, “Because it’s a deep, comprehensive free trade agreement, its zero tariffs, zero quotas, not just for the car industry, an agreement on services, having equivalents on financial services, we’ve set all this out.”

Painting a stark choice between a Tory majority government and a “chaotic” coalition following a hung parliament, the chancellor restated his party’s key pledges to increase spending on the NHS and schools, recruit more police officers and raise the threshold at which people begin making national insurance contributions.

Despite leaving open the possibility of the UK crashing out of the EU, Javid stressed the UK would secure a trade deal with the bloc by the end of next year and said a zero-tariff deal had been agreed in principle, though he admitted there was still “some detail” to discuss.

“Nobody wants a no-deal Brexit,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today program. “Every business I speak to, their fears are the uncertainty around Brexit. They want that to end. They want the deal to go through.”

He added: “We are getting on with Brexit. We are delivering our exit from the EU. We’ve agreed a fantastic new trade deal with the EU. Businesses are also absolutely petrified of a Jeremy Corbyn government.”

Tory ambitions to pass a tax-cutting, post-Brexit budget within 100 days of taking office have been dismissed by opposition parties, who cast doubt on the feasibility of the timetable. The Liberal Democrats described the plan as “pure fantasy” and accused Boris Johnson of lying to the public.

It was put to Javid that Johnson had only managed to secure a new Brexit deal by agreeing to a customs border in the Irish Sea – which had previously been a major red line – but he did not respond to that point.

Asked whether he would have written an article comparing veiled Muslim women to letterboxes, as Johnson had, Javid refused to criticize his party’s leader.

“I don’t write articles,” he said. “He was a journalist and he’s written lots of articles, as he’s said himself, people can pick one word out or another but what matters is the kind of prime minister he’s going to be.”

His comments came a day after it emerged that Johnson had claimed that children of working mothers in low-income families were more likely to “mug you on the street corner”.

Javid, a former Deutsche Bank director, was also asked whether the Conservatives were ashamed of rising homelessness under the party. He sought to deflect blame towards Labor, which had claimed government policies had been “directly responsible” for people living and dying on the streets.

“I care deeply about the worst off in our society,” Javid told Sky. “Homelessness reached its peak in 2008 under the last Labor government, since then it’s down by almost a half. There’s still a long way to go, we’ve still got work to do, but its Labor that was responsible for the massive rise in homelessness.”

Javid also restated Tory plans to introduce an Australian-style points-based system for immigration. “We have a right to control our borders and that’s what you’ll get with the Conservatives, is this Australian-type system,” he said.

“It will mean we will have immigration, of course we will, and immigration – I say this as a second-generation migrant myself – has benefited our country immensely in so many ways.”