PM’s plea to Macron and Merkel: Let’s do a deal by October 31
BORIS Johnson is expected to ask Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron today to rule out another Brexit delay to pressure MPs to back a revised deal.
The Prime Minister was arriving in New York last night for the annual UN General Assembly, which he hopes to turn into a mini Brexit summit.
Mr Johnson is thought to be planning three-way talks with the German Chancellor and French President to outline his plans to replace the Irish backstop.
Tory sources said the PM would also try to persuade them to make it clear that any new deal would have to be passed by October 31.
Ministers believe the move would prevent MPs kicking the can down the road again – and force them to finally choose between leaving the EU with a deal and departing without one.
It would potentially sidestep a controversial new law requiring Mr Johnson to seek another three-month extension to Britain’s EU membership unless a deal has been approved by Parliament by October 19.
However, sources acknowledge that the ploy will only succeed if Mr Johnson can first persuade EU leaders to compromise on the Irish backstop.
Brussels is still insisting that Northern Ireland must remain in the EU customs zone – which is anathema to Mr Johnson and his DUP allies in Ulster.
One insider said: ‘If there is going to be a deal then the EU is going to have to move on that.’
Mr Johnson will use his threeday trip to New York to hold Brexit discussions with EU President Donald Tusk, Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, Dutch PM Mark Rutte and Belgian leader Charles Michel. Yesterday, Michael Gove underlined Government fears that MPs may force another Brexit delay.
Writing in The Sunday Times, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster warned that breaking the referendum promise would fuel support for populist readers on the Right and Left.
He said three years of Brexit wrangling had left public confidence in Westminster on a ‘razor edge of peril’, adding: ‘If we make the wrong decisions, we will see faith in our democracy damaged. If we still find ourselves in the EU after October 31, having accepted we can only ever leave when the EU decides and on terms it dictates, we will see support for the Conservative Party collapse.’
Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab issued a public warning to the EU that the Government would not accept a deal which left Northern Ireland stuck in the customs union after Brexit.
The UK has proposed an allIreland agriculture zone for livestock and food, which could remove the need for border checks on 40 per cent of trade.
But ministers are unwilling to contemplate a deal that would require customs checks on other goods travelling between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. Mr Raab told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show yesterday there ‘ couldn’t be a Northern Ireland- only backstop in its entirety in the way it was proposed previously’.
Asked if the proposals for cooperation on agriculture could be widened to cover other areas, he said: ‘The further you go, the more you risk the principle that there’ll be no change in the status of Northern Ireland without the consent of the people of Northern Ireland – and that’s democratically wrong.’
He pointed to an upbeat assessment by Jean- Claude Juncker last week in which the European Commission chief said the British proposals could provide the ‘basis’ for a deal.