Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said Tuesday that Britain's governing Conservative Party would be committing "political suicide" if it tries to force through a no-deal Brexit.
Hunt, who is among the 10 candidates vying to replace the outgoing Theresa May as Britain's prime minister, said trying to take the UK out of the European Union without a deal would trigger a general election in which the Conservatives risked being "annihilated".
He said the centre-right party would face an existential threat, with voters who supported staying in the EU defecting to the pro-EU Liberal Democrats and those who supported leaving the EU heading to the Brexit Party.
The newly-formed Brexit Party led by Nigel Farage topped last week's European Parliament elections.
"The results contain a simple message which we ignore at our peril: if we attempt a general election before we have delivered Brexit we will be annihilated," Hunt wrote in The Daily Telegraph newspaper.
"Attacked by the Brexit Party on the right and the Liberal Democrats on the left, we will face extinction. Any candidate for prime minister whose strategy leads inexorably to a general election is offering a prospectus for disaster."
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