Boris bravado boosts odds of no-deal Brexit

AS THE final leg of the UK Tory leadership race ends its first week proper, Boris Johnson remains the favourite to become the UK's next prime minister, despite recent allegations over a domestic incident last week with his girlfriend. The maverick former foreign secretary is facing off against current Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt in a clash that is seeing no-deal Brexit as the centrestage of debate within the electorate of 160,000 Tory party members - despite the fact that this disorderly outcome to the UK's exit from the EU is still widely misunderstood.

Mr Johnson - who easily finished top this month in polls of Tory MPs in the House of Commons - put this issue upfront again on Tuesday when he challenged Mr Hunt to pledge to leave the EU on Oct 31, come what may. Mr Johnson knows that his "do or die" hard-line stance on this issue will resonate with party members who - as polls indicate - now overwhelmingly want to leave the Brussels-based club. And this comes even if it means major political damage such as the end of the centuries-long union between England and Scotland, which has been frayed by Brexit given the latter's stronger attachment to EU membership.

Amid the frenzy of the current Tory race, and Mr Johnson's political opportunism on Brexit, there is only one current certainty with the UK's exit from the EU. That is, the default position legally is that the nation will depart the Brussels-based club on Oct 31, barring a further extension agreed with the EU-27, whether an exit deal is ratified or not.