‘PM must rid the contract of poison pills put in by May’
BORIS JOHNSON needs to renegotiate the Withdrawal Agreement or jeopardise Britain’s hard-won freedom from Brussels control, the Centre for Brexit Policy
(CBP) has warned.
The cross-party thinktank says the deal mostly negotiated by Theresa May’s government contains “poison pills” that will undermine British sovereignty and could cost the country £165billion.
The 100-page analysis comes just a few weeks after Mr Johnson’s chief negotiator David Frost, inset, admitted the Government was trying to iron out flaws in the Withdrawal Agreement, which allowed the UK to have an orderly exit on January 31 this year. Mr Frost said there had not been enough time to renegotiate the whole agreement after Mr Johnson took over from Ms
May to get Brexit done.
The CBP has agreed and laid out a blueprint for the issues that need to be resolved in the trade and security deal currently being negotiated. These include the Northern Ireland Protocol, EU citizens’ rights, the £39billion divorce payment, future financial liabilities, EU data protection laws, EU geographical indications of origin which are not reciprocal, and provisions relating to UK sovereign bases in countries like Cyprus.
This is on top of resisting EU demands to be allowed to fish in British waters and take control of British regulations through so-called “level playing field” provisions.
John Longworth, directorgeneral of the CBP, said: “The British public repeatedly voted to ‘take back control’ and to ‘get Brexit done’.
“But we are now in the fine-print stage of our departure, and close examination of the terms agreed by Theresa May and only partially improved so far by Boris Johnson reveals that we are a still long way from fully restoring our national independence.
“We must ensure our future relationship with the EU does not undermine our right to take our place on the world stage like other independent nations – free to cooperate with friendly countries but not to be controlled by them.”
Nobel
Prizewinner and former
Northern Ireland First Minister Lord Trimble pointed out in his foreword that “the Withdrawal Agreement clearly rips the Good Friday Agreement apart” by handing law-making power over Northern Ireland to the EU.
Meanwhile, former charity boss and Brexit Party MEP Matthew Patten said: “To regain our sovereignty, Boris Johnson is going to have to rip up and replace the agreement he signed just six months ago.”
The report has also revealed that the British public is in no doubt that Brexit must mean a full restoration of sovereignty.
By a margin of 49 per cent to 26 per cent, people in so-called “Red Wall” seats – won off Labour by the Conservatives in December – who were polled by Savanta Comres for the study, agreed with the statement: “Leaving the EU in 2020, rather than later, will mean that Britain recaptures the national independence it had before it joined the Common Market in 1973 sooner.”
This rises to two-thirds among Redwall residents who voted Labour in the 2017 general election then switched to the Conservatives in 2019 – and nearly three-quarters of people who voted Conservative in both elections.