Backstop means UK ‘will not have to pay any tariffs’

Gove says Britain ‘has EU over a barrel’ as he backs May’s deal

BRITAIN will be able to send goods to the EU market without paying a penny in tariffs or charges because of the Northern Ireland ‘backstop’ deal, UK minister Michael Gove has boasted.

Mr Gove’s comments represented the most daring statement yet in favour of Theresa May’s compromise deal.

He appeared to goad the EU by claiming that Britain won’t have to pay a penny to get its goods into the European market and that European politicians wish they had the same Northern Ireland-type deal for their countries.

Britain now had the EU ‘over a barrel’, he insisted.

Under the provisional deal, the North will remain in a customs and tariff-free deal with the EU, thereby opening a landbridge for Britain into the massive 27-state EU market. Mr Gove, one of the leaders of the Leave campaign in the referendum in 2016, told the BBC’s Andrew Marr TV show that the North deal was far better for the UK than it was for the EU.

He said he acknowledged that the Northern Ireland situation was ‘the most difficult element of the deal’.

Mr Gove said: ‘The critical thing about the backstop is, however uncomfortable it is for the UK, it is more uncomfortable for the European Union.

‘We will have tariff-free access to their markets without paying a penny. And, more than that, we will have control of our borders.’

Mr Gove dismissed a claim by French president Emmanuel Macron that the EU would be able to exploit the Northern Ireland customs deal to extract concessions from Britain over access to fisheries. ‘He doesn’t have us over a barrel. We have got him over a barrel of herring and a barrel of mackerel. He wants that access to our waters. We can sit in the backstop and say “No, absolutely not”,’ he said.

Mr Gove said he had reflected ‘long and hard’ before deciding to back the British prime minister’s plan – which still has to be approved by MPs at a crucial vote on December 11.

His warning came as the UK’s shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer said it was ‘inevitable’ Labour would move a vote of no confidence in the British government if the deal was voted down.