The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Downing Street denies May and Johnson rift
Foreign Secretary mocked PM’s proposals for customs partnership
Downing Street has said Theresa May continues to have full confidence in Boris Johnson, after the Foreign Secretary attacked proposals for a customs partnership after Brexit as “crazy”.
Mrs May is understood to favour the arrangement, under which the UK would collect customs tariffs on behalf of the EU, as a means of breaking the deadlock in Brexit talks on the future of the Irish border.
But she failed to win over senior colleagues at a meeting of her Brexit “war cabinet” last week, forcing her to ask officials to rethink the plan, along with a second “maximum facilitation” option using new technology to reduce friction at the border.
In what was being seen as a public challenge to the Prime Minister’s stance, Mr Johnson used an interview with the Daily Mail to warn the customs partnership option would create a “whole new web of bureaucracy”.
The plan would not comply with promises to take back control, and would hamper the UK’s ability to strike trade deals, said the foreign secretary.
“It’s totally untried and would make it very, very difficult to do free trade deals,” he told the Mail.
“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.”
Mrs May’s official spokesman said the issue was not discussed at yesterday’s regular meeting of Cabinet in 10 Downing Street, which Mr Johnson attended after returning from a visit to the US.
The spokesman declined to say whether the PM had spoken privately with the foreign secretary about his comments.
But asked whether Mrs May continued to have full confidence in Mr Johnson as foreign secretary, the PM’s spokesman said: “Yes.”
He added: “There are two customs models that were put forward by the government last August and most recently outlined in the prime minister’s Mansion House speech which the entire Cabinet was signed up to.
“Following last week’s sub-committee meeting, it was agreed that there are unresolved issues in relation to both models and that further work is needed.
“The prime minister asked officials to take forward that work as a priority.”