UK's Boris Johnson: PM May's Brexit plans are an outrage

Boris Johnson, Prime Minister Theresa May's former foreign secretary, said her Brexit plans were a constitutional outrage that would humiliate the United Kingdom by leaving it under the European Union's sway for generations to come.

"It would mean that UK business and industry, our entire economy, would be exposed perpetually to regulations that might have been expressly designed at the behest of foreign competitors to do them down," Johnson told the Conservative Party conference in the English city of Birmingham.

"It would mean that whatever the EU came up with in future ... all this nonsense we would have to implement with no ability to change or resist," he said. "That is not pragmatic, that is not a compromise - it is dangerous and unstable, politically and economically.

"My fellow Conservatives, this is not democracy. That is not what we voted for," he said.

Johnson called on the Conservative Party to chuck out Prime Minister Theresa May's "Chequers" Brexit proposals which he said were an attempt to mislead British voters.

"This is the moment to chuck Chequers," Johnson said to applause and shouts of "bravo" at the Conservative Party conference.

"If we cheat the electorate, and Chequers is a cheat, we will escalate that sense of mistrust," he said. "If we get it wrong, if we bottle Brexit now, believe me, the people of this country will find it hard to forgive."