A CLIFF-EDGE Brexit is now the most likely scenario, the International Trade Secretary has warned, after previously saying a deal with the EU would be “the easiest in human history”.

Brexiter Dr Liam Fox said the odds of a no-deal Brexit had risen to 60-40, and blamed European “intransigence” for failing to accept the UK’s unprecedented plans for leaving.

Opposition parties said he was trying to blame others for a mess of his own making, and warned it would be a disaster for the UK to crash out of Europe without a trade and customs relationship with the continent.

Official contingency plans suggest a no deal Brexit could choke ports, create food and medicine shortages, lead to social unrest and torpedo the economy.

Downing Street said it was “confident” of a good deal, but did not disown Dr Fox’s remarks, which chime with its effort to sell Theresa May’s Chequers plan for a soft Brexit in Europe.

Last week, as part of a Cabinet drive to concentrate minds across the Channel, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt warned the UK and EU were heading a for no deal “by accident”.

Mrs May also interrupted her holiday to meet France’s President Macron to discuss it.

Michel Barnier, the EU’s top negotiator, last week trashed key parts of the Chequers plan, saying it tried to cherry pick parts of long-standing trade and customs arrangements.

Dr Fox said Mr Barnier’s had dismissed the proposal, which has split the Tories, simply because "we have never done it before", making “the chance of no deal greater”.

He told the Sunday Times: “I think the intransigence of the [European] Commission is pushing us towards no deal. We have set out the basis in which a deal can happen.

“But if the EU decides that the theological obsession of the unelected is to take priority over the economic wellbeing of the people of Europe then it's a bureaucrats' Brexit - not a people's Brexit - then there is only going to be one outcome."

He said that if the EU didn’t like the Chequers plan it was down to them to offer one “acceptable to us”.

He said: “It’s up to the EU 27 to determine whether they want the EU Commission’s theological purity to be maintained at the expense of their real economies.”

“I think it’s essential that no deal looks creible to the EU.”

In July 2017, Dr Fox said EU-UK legal and regulatory alignment made a deal easy.

He said: “The free trade agreement that we will have to do with the European Union should be one of the easiest in human history. We don’t want to have no deal. It is much better that we have a deal than no deal. We can of course survive with no deal.”

Bank of England governor Mark Carney warned on Friday the odds of no-deal were “uncomfortably high”, sparking a fall in the value of the pound.

Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer said no deal would be “a catastrophic failure of government, which no government should survive”, and MPs had a duty to prevent it.

He blamed Mrs may’s “reckless red lines” on leaving the single market, customs union and European Court of Justice, Tory divisions and “fantasy Brexiteer promises”.

SNP Brexit Secretary Michael Russell tweeted about Dr Fox: “It is not astonishing (given his political track record) but it is deeply worrying that he understands so little about the EU.”

SNP foreign affairs spokesperson Stephen Gethins MP said: “First it was Jeremy Hunt, then Mark Carney, and now Liam Fox is saying we are likely facing a ‘no-deal’ scenario when the UK leaves the EU.

“The Tory government’s chaotic handling of the Brexit negotiations, and its ideological red lines, have resulted in small and large businesses already having one foot out the door.

“With eight months left before the self-imposed Brexit date, the UK government must commit to remaining in the single market and customs union. There is still time for the government to take a step back and work with the business community and devolved governments to pursue an outcome that safeguards our economy, jobs and living standards."

Former Tory minister Priti Patel said Mrs May may should ditch the Chequers plan, which would maintain a “common rule book” on goods and agri-foods.

The Brexiter MP said it did not fulfill the referendum result and would “leave us half-in and half-out, still bound to EU regulations and constraints”.

In a swipe at the PM, she said “political courage, the kind of courage that appears to have been lacking over the past two years”, was required to deliver a loose frade trade deal.

Ina newspaper article, former Labour Home Secretary Lord Blunkett said people who voted Leave over immigration concerns were not “racist”, but had been issuing a “cry for help” about the state of the political system and the aftermath of the financial crash on their lives.

He said if there was a second EU referendum the result would still be Leave.