Boris Johnson has claimed he feels ‘deep, deep regret’ about not being able to deliver his promise of Brexit by Halloween.

The Prime Minister said he will ‘of course’ apologise to Conservative Party members who voted for him because he guaranteed them he would take the UK out of the EU by 31 October. He blamed Parliament for ‘refusing’ to implement the deal he signed off with EU leaders and said he could see ‘no reason whatsoever’ for extending the Brexit transition period beyond its current deadline of December 2020.

Speaking to Sophy Ridge on Sky News, Mr Johnson said: ‘If you get the right Parliament anything’s possible. ‘But what you can do from the beginning is, of course, you can begin negotiating, not just with the EU but with countries around the world, and that’s one of the great opportunities that we have next year.’

The PM said he secured a ‘great new deal’ but added: ‘We got Parliament to say it was a good deal, but then they refused to implement it. ‘Actually, there was bags of time between that vote to, when they first said it was a good deal and when they could have got us out on 31 October.’

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Quizzed on whether he could take any responsibility instead of blaming the Brexit extension on others, the PM said: ‘Well, I do. I do and I’m deeply, deeply disappointed.’ Mr Johnson said he was ‘absolutely’ sorry and said it was a ‘matter of deep regret’. He said: ‘What we need to do now is get on and do it and the difference between this Government and any other party is that only this Government offers a deal that is ready to go and a way of delivering it immediately in the middle of December, if we’re lucky enough to get a majority, and, of course, it’s a big if and we’ll be working very hard.

‘The reason why it’s necessary to have an election is because I’m afraid, otherwise, what was going to happen was Parliament was going to rope-a-dope us. ‘They were going to say, “OK, you know, we’ll agree this, we’ll agree that”, but they weren’t actually going to give final approval, not to, by new year, not by 31 January, and then we would have had to go for another extension, and the reason why.

‘It’s so painful to have these extensions, it’s not ’cause of, you know, my promises or my ego or whatever, it’s because the uncertainty that it means for the whole country. ‘Businesses can’t plan, families can’t plan, people just don’t know when Brexit is going to be done and that’s why I think that the offer from the Labour Party is so crazy and so debilitating because what they’re saying is have another referendum and keep the whole thing going.’