PM reassures Brexiteers on ‘time-limited’ backstop plan

THERESA May has promised that the Brexit backstop plan to keep the UK aligned with the EU’s customs union after 2020 will be ‘time-limited’ – if it is introduced at all.

The proposal to prevent a hard border in Northern Ireland if the UK and EU cannot agree new arrangements in time would apply only ‘in a very limited set of circumstances’, she said.

Her reassurances follow warnings from leading Brexit campaigners Michael Gove and Boris Johnson who both have reservations about the proposal.

The backstop, which was signed off by the Prime Minister’s Brexit ‘war cabinet’, would mean the UK matching EU customs duties to avoid checks on goods crossing the Irish border.

But some Brexiteers are unhappy with the proposals which they fear could be indefinitely extended beyond the end of the transition period in December 2020.

Reassuring them yesterday during a visit to the Jodrell Bank Observatory in Cheshire, Mrs May said: ‘What we’re proposing is an alternative backstop

proposal, but nobody wants this to be the solution that is achieved.

‘We want to achieve the right solution through our overall relationship with the European Union.

‘If it is necessary, it will be in a very limited set of circumstances for a limited time. But we are working on achieving that commitment to Northern Ireland through our overall relationship with the European Union.’

Her remarks follow an intervention by Environment Secretary Mr Gove who told a Policy Exchange think-tank conference that ‘the whole point about a backstop is it is intended not to be implemented but it is there just in case’.

Foreign Secretary Mr Johnson has said Mrs May would be ‘true to her promises’ and deliver a deal with the EU.

‘It is there just in case’