FG launches attack on ‘ignorant’ Boris
Tory MP under fire over Ireland-UK bridge idea
‘Offered nothing but resignation’
BORIS Johnson has been branded ‘ignorant and irrelevant’ by Fine Gael after he suggested a bridge between Ireland and the UK as a Brexit solution.
Senator Neale Richmond, the party’s European Affairs spokesman, launched the stinging attack on the former British foreign secretary.
It came after Mr Johnson gave an interview criticising Theresa May’s Brexit plan and backing a proposed bridge between Northern Ireland and Scotland.
Senator Richmond said the bridge idea showed Mr Johnson could not be rated as either a statesman or an engineer.
The Tory MP had said Britain needed self-belief to build the bridge. At the start of the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham yesterday, he said: ‘What we need to do is build a bridge between our islands. Why don’t we? There is so much more we can do, and what grieves me about the current approach to Brexit is that we are just in danger of not believing in ourselves, not believing in Britain.’
Mr Johnson, who signed up to an EU-Northern Ireland customs alignment to avoid a hard border in December, has now claimed he and Mrs May were ‘misled’ on the issue by the EU.
He told The Sunday Times: ‘I remember going in to see the PM and her advisers and being absolutely reassured that this was just a form of words that was necessary to float the negotiations off the rocks. What has happened is that the issue has been allowed to dominate in a way that we were expressly promised would not happen.’
Senator Richmond rejected the bridge idea completely, saying: ‘It is a wholly impractical notion designed to distract from the real and serious dangers Brexit poses to the Good Friday Agreement.
‘I didn’t rate Boris as a Brexit statesman – I certainly don’t rate him as an engineer.’
Senator Richmond was left seething by Mr Johnson’s efforts to dismiss the Northern Ireland customs alignment backstop – the key issue that has brought negotiations between Brussels and the UK to a standstill.
‘It is galling to see a man who sat at the British cabinet table for two years, holding one of the great offices of state, try to dismiss and belittle rock-solid commitments that the government, which he was a member of, not only endorsed but acknowledged were of crucial importance,’ he said. ‘Mr Johnson had ample opportunities in his time at cabinet to propose solutions to the many problems that Brexit proposes, yet he offered nothing but his resignation.’
Senator Richmond said that ‘once upon a time, Mr Johnson was a serious player’ – but added it is now clear ‘he and his ideas are nothing more than ignorant and irrelevant and coaxed in a worryingly mind-set’.
Mr Johnson’s proposals did not fare any better across the Irish Sea, with even one of his key Brexit allies, David Davis, dismissing the plan. Tory MP Mr Davis told Sky News: ‘Boris is a great mate of mine, we have a very knockabout friendship, but quite a lot of his ideas, I think, are good headlines but not necessarily good policies.’