‘We can change exit terms’
British voters will be in control, says pro-Brexit lawmaker
LONDON: British voters will be able to change the terms of the country’s relationship with the European Union after leaving the bloc if they don’t like the final Brexit deal, senior cabinet minister and proBrexit lawmaker Michael Gove (pic) said.
Britain and the EU achieved “sufficient progress” in Brexit negotiations on Friday to allow them to move on to discussing future trade ties in a move welcomed by Gove and other Brexit supporters in Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservative Party.
However, while Gove, who is Britain’s environment minister, reiterated his support for May, he gave succour to critics of the deal by saying that if Britons were dissatisfied with the terms of Brexit, future governments could change it.
“The British people will be in control. By the time of the next election, EU law and any new treaty with the EU will cease to have primacy or direct effect in UK law,” Gove wrote in a column in the
Daily Telegraph.
“If the British people dislike the arrangement that we have negotiated with the EU, the agreement will allow a future government to diverge.”
Britain is due to exit the EU in March 2019. The next election is not scheduled until 2022, though there has been speculation in British media that it could come earlier, given May’s lack of a parliamentary majority and deep divisions within her party about Brexit.
Some eurosceptic voices outside the government have said that May has betrayed British “leave” voters and given in to EU demands with the agreement.
It has been a tough week for May after Northern Ireland’s small Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) – whose support she needs in parliament – unexpectedly blocked an initial deal on Monday, leaving Britain and the EU scrambling to find wording acceptable to all sides ahead of next week’s summit of EU leaders.
While agreement was eventually reached on Friday, Gove said all British proposals were provisional on a final deal being done, and even then, that arrangement could be revisited by future governments.
Matthew Parris, an antiBrexit columnist and former Conservative lawmaker, told BBC radio that Gove might envisage a situation in which he would be spearheading a new approach to Brexit.
But Gove, who was briefly in the running to lead the party last year, praised May yesterday, and said the deal was a result of her “tenacity and skill”.