Brexit campaigner Boris Johnson says Britain “still part of Europe”

PanARMENIAN.Net - Top Brexit campaigner Boris Johnson sought Monday, June 27 to build bridges with Europe and with defeated Britons who voted to remain in the EU in last week's historic referendum.

Johnson, a former London mayor now a favorite to succeed outgoing Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron, said there would be an "intensifying" of cooperation with Europe despite the vote to quit the EU.

"I cannot stress too much that Britain is part of Europe," Johnson wrote in his regular column in the Daily Telegraph newspaper.

He also said there was no need to rush Britain's exit from the EU, and also played down the prospect of Scottish independence.

"The only change -- and it will not come in any great rush -- is that the UK will extricate itself from the EU's extraordinary and opaque system of legislation," he wrote, according to AFP.

"EU citizens living in this country will have their rights fully protected, and the same goes for British citizens living in the EU," he said.

"British people will still be able to go and work in the EU; to live; to travel; to study; to buy homes and settle down."

Britons voted by 52 percent to 48 percent in favour of leaving the European Union in a vote that exposed deep divisions in the country and sent shockwaves through the world.