Britain is heading for ‘car-crash’ deal with EU says Boris

BORIS Johnson has warned that backstop plans to deal with the Northern Ireland land border with Ireland will end “in a political car crash” and leave Britain as a “vassal state” to the EU.

The former foreign secretary claimed that he and other Brexiteers were “taken in” by the controversial Northern Ireland backstop proposals in the divorce agreement with Brussels that Theresa May signed last December.

But Mr Johnson said he and others had subsequently agreed to the deal after being given private assurances it would never be invoked.

Disastrous

The backstop would see Britain’s regulations tied to those of the EU and could see Northern Ireland kept under EU rule in the single market.

Mr Johnson denounced alternative plans set out by the PM as a “constitutional abomination” which would leave Britain as a “humiliated rules taker”.

He has backed proposals by the pro-Brexit European Research Group that physical checks can be done away from the border, without keeping the UK or Northern Ireland tied to EU customs rules.

And it has been reported that Brussels is preparing to accept use of technology to avoid the need for new border infrastructure. Mr Johnson said: “If the Brexit negotiations continue on this path they will end, I am afraid, in a spectacular political car crash.

“If we are to get out of this mess, and get the great British motor back on track, then we need to understand the Irish backstop, and how it is being used to coerce the UK into becoming a vassal state.”

The EU’s backstop would leave a border down the Irish Sea while the UK’s proposal left it “volunteering” to “remain effectively in the customs union and large parts of the single market”, Mr Johnson wrote in a newspaper column.

“Both versions of the backstop are disastrous. One threatens the union; the other version, and its close cousin, Chequers, keep us effectively in the EU, as humiliated rules takers.”

He added: “We need to challenge the assumptions of both these Irish backstops, or we are heading full throttle for the ditch with a total write-off of Brexit.

“We are straining at the gnat of the Irish border problem, in fact we haven’t even tried to chew the gnat, and we are swallowing the camel of EU membership in all but name.”

But Number 10 said Mr Johnson had signed up to the joint report, including the backstop provision.