Customs deals go back to drawing
PLANS for a controversial new ‘customs partnership’ with the EU were sent back to the drawing board last night after Boris Johnson branded them ‘crazy’.
Ministers had been told to keep their diaries clear tomorrow for a possible rerun of last week’s bruising meeting of Theresa May’s Brexit war Cabinet.
But Whitehall sources last night confirmed the meeting would be delayed for at least a week while officials try to devise a compromise that will unite the Cabinet’s warring Brexiteers and Remainers.
‘The customs partnership won’t go ahead in its current form,’ one source said. ‘There’s a recognition that we can’t simply
BORIS GOES TO WAR ON ‘CRAZY’ NO10 TRADE PLAN
re-badge one of the proposals and hope to get it through.’
The Foreign Secretary on Monday launched a devastating assault on the plans for a new customs partnership, which critics claim would keep Britain in the customs union by the back door and wreck hopes of the UK striking new trade deals. In an explosive interview with the Daily Mail, Mr Johnson suggested he would never be able to accept the proposal, which is favoured by some of Mrs May’s closest aides.
‘It is totally untried and would make it very difficult to do free trade deals,’ he said.
‘If you have the new customs partnership, you have a crazy system whereby you end up collecting the tariffs on behalf of the EU at the UK frontier. If the EU decides to impose punitive tariffs on something the UK wants to bring in cheaply there’s nothing you can do. That’s not taking back control of your trade policy, it’s not taking back control of your trade policy, it’s not taking back control of your laws.’
Jacob Rees-Mogg, chairman of the influential European Research Group of Tory MPs, said Mr Johnson had ‘hit the nail on
the head’. Bernard Jenkin, another Brexiteer, said opposition to the idea within the party was so strong, Mrs May would have to abandon it.
Some Tories warned Mrs May would face civil war – or even a leadership contest – if she tried to railroad the plan through Cabinet.
But pro-Remain Tories reacted angrily to Mr Johnson’s intervention. Former attorney general Dominic Grieve said: ‘It is certainly undesirable that when you are having Cabinet discussions... members of Cabinet should use the press to articulate their own view in the terms the way that Boris Johnson has done it.’
Downing Street yesterday tried to defuse the row by issuing only the mildest rebuke to Mr Johnson. The PM’s official spokesman said the customs partnership was one of two ‘viable options’ for deciding post-Brexit customs arrangements. And he pointed out that Mr Johnson had ‘signed up’ to the plans when they were raised by Mrs May in her Mansion House speech on Brexit in March.
But he insisted that Mrs May retained ‘full confidence’ in the Foreign Secretary.
Meanwhile, a new report today suggests that the Irish border issue could be solved with technology. The Policy Exchange study argues that GPS technology could be used to track lorry movements without the need for cameras or other infrastructure at the border.
Lord Trimble, former First Minister of Northern Ireland, said a hard border could be avoided if all sides demonstrated the political will needed. He added: ‘I hope that true friends of Northern Ireland – including the partners in peace all those years ago – will cease the scaremongering and work for a practical, prosperous future.’