Brexit could still be avoided if UK citizens changed their minds and decided they did not want their country to leave the European Union, European Council President Donald Tusk said on Tuesday.
Taking to Twitter, Tusk said Europe had never had a change of heart and was still open to the UK, following many calls from within the UK to hold a second referendum on the country’s future within the bloc, Efe news agency reported. “Unless there is a change of heart among our British friends, Brexit will become a reality — with all its negative consequences — in March next year,” he said. In his first speech of the year to the European Parliament, he said David Davis, chief Brexit negotiator for the UK, had himself said that if a democracy could not change its mind, it stopped being a democracy.
His statements were made amid a new wave of outrage among pro-Remain Britons, who were reacting to an interview by Brexit campaigner and Foreign Minister Boris Johnson, who on Monday said his famous claim that Brexit could see 350 million pounds ($483 million) pumped weekly into the British economy was too low an estimate.