Birmingham, England (dpa) - Outspoken former British foreign secretary Boris Johnson on Tuesday urged Prime Minister Theresa May‘s Conservative party to back her leadership but reject her "Chequers" proposals for Brexit.Johnson, who resigned from May‘s cabinet in July over his opposition to the plan, said the Chequers proposals were a "constitutional outrage" that would leave Britain "locked in the tractor beam of Brussels" after it leaves the European Union in March."It is dangerous and unstable - politically and economically," Johnson told hundreds of supporters in a speech at a packed fringe event during the party‘s annual conference in the central city of Birmingham.May‘s plan is to create a free-trade area for goods and agricultural products, keeping the sectors under EU single market rules and ensuring an open border between Northern Ireland and Ireland.The plan would see Britain leaving the single market for services, which account for some 80 per cent of its economy."My fellow Conservatives, this is not democracy. This is not what we voted for," Johnson said, after a majority of 52 per cent of the British public voted for Brexit in a 2016 referendum."Chuck Chequers," he added, to loud applause.Conservative eurosceptic lawmaker Nadine Dorries said Johnson gave "an electrifying speech.""No other speaker at conference has had this response," Dorries tweeted.Johnson advocated policies including the devolution of public finances, tax cuts and and an export drive.He said trade with the EU, which had been the focus since the 1970s, "makes much less sense today, in the globalized economy."However, Johnson also urged delegates to continue to support May. "Back Theresa May in the best way possible... by supporting her original plan," he said.He cited May‘s call for a "global Britain" to seek new free-trade deals with major economies, in her "Lancaster House" proposals in January, arguing that these ideas had been watered down in the Chequers proposals.Johnson, who is popular with right-wing and eurosceptic Conservatives, is seen as a potential leadership challenger to May.But he made only one self-deprecatory reference to his leadership ambitions in his speech.Johnson said a prediction that he would never be prime minister by Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond could be the first correct treasury forecast by Hammond, a supporter of a softer Brexit.Simon Usherwood, a Brexit-focused political analyst at the University of Surrey, said Johnson‘s speech had drawn attention "because he can articulate much of the unhappiness others feel towards [May].""As an alternative to Chequers, it‘s very thin stuff indeed," Usherwood tweeted after Johnson outlined his Brexit plan."Boris‘s problem: today he really had to sh*t or get off the pot," tweeted Tim Bale, a political scientist at Queen Mary University of London."But he doesn‘t have the numbers to do the former or the decency to do the latter," Bale wrote.Pro-EU opposition Labour lawmaker David Lammy suggested Johnson could still harbour ambitions to succeed May, highlighting his vow to reintroduce controversial police "stop and search" powers, which were used disproportionately against members of ethnic minorities."Once again our pound-shop Donald Trump is playing games of ethnic division to further his grubby leadership ambitions," Lammy tweeted.
