May’s Irish Brexit plan is a disaster, warns Boris

Negotiations will be a ‘write-off ’ unless PM rips up Chequers border proposals, he says

BREXIT will be “a total write-off ” unless Theresa May rips up “disastrous” plans for the Irish border before she heads to a crucial EU summit this week, Boris Johnson warns today.

The former foreign secretary says the EU’S “backstop” proposal for Northern Ireland would mean the province being “annexed” by Brussels, while Mrs May’s alternative solution would keep the whole of Britain “effectively” in the EU.

He says ministers are “straining at the gnat” of the Irish border problem while “swallowing the camel of EU membership in all but name”.

Mrs May will attend a two-day EU summit that starts on Wednesday in Salzburg, Austria, where she hopes to make a breakthrough in the Brexit negotiations by selling her Chequers plan directly to fellow leaders.

But even if she manages to convince the other 27 EU leaders to accept Chequers, she must then win the backing of Parliament for any deal based on her highly controversial plan.

Conservative MPS are increasingly coalescing around two opposing views: scrapping Chequers, or using Chequers to get a deal before renegotiating the UK-EU relationship at a later date.

Michael Gove, the Environment Secretary, who fronted the Leave campaign with Mr Johnson, yesterday called on Eurosceptics to support Chequers “for now”.

But his pleas were ignored by Mr Johnson, who urged the Prime Minister to go back to the drawing board, starting with a new proposal for Northern Ireland.

Writing in today’s Daily Telegraph, he says: “If the Brexit negotiations continue on this path they will end, I am afraid, in a spectacular political car crash.…

“If we are to get out of this mess, and get the great British motor back on track, then we need to understand the Irish backstop, and how it is being used to coerce the UK into becoming a vassal state of Brussels.”

Mr Johnson argues that the EU’S “backstop” for Northern Ireland – the arrangement that will be put into place in the absence of any other agreement over the Irish border – “is little short of an attempt to annex Northern Ireland” because it would keep the province within the EU customs union and large parts of its single market.

Mrs May has said that no British prime minister could ever accept such a plan, because it would mean a customs border down the Irish Sea, threatening the Union itself.

Her alternative is to keep the whole of Britain “effectively in the customs union” and abiding by rules set down in Brussels and enforced by the European Court of Justice, Mr Johnson says.

“If Chequers were adopted,” he suggests, “it would mean that for the first time since 1066 our leaders were deliberately acquiescing in foreign rule”.

Mr Johnson adds: “Both versions of the backstop are disastrous...we need to challenge the assumptions of both, or we are heading full throttle for the ditch with a total write-off of Brexit.”

Earlier this week the DUP, on whose support Mrs May relies for her working majority in Parliament, backed an alternative proposal for Northern Ireland put forward by the European Research Group, the 60-strong band

of Tory Eurosceptics led by Jacob Rees-mogg. They argue that a combination of trusted trader schemes, self-assessment and customs checks at warehouses and points of sale can avoid the need for a hard border in Ireland.

Mrs May argues that any customs controls, even carried out away from the border, contravene the Belfast Agreement, but her critics disagree.

Using a Bible reference to sum up the problem, Mr Johnson writes: “We are straining at the gnat of the Irish border problem – in fact we haven’t even tried to chew the gnat – and we are swallowing the camel of EU mem- bership in all but name.”

Mrs May sent Mr Gove on to the BBC’S Andrew Marr Show yesterday to sell her Chequers proposal to a domestic audience, and particularly fellow MPS, before she heads to Austria.

Labour has already said it will vote against any Brexit deal based on Chequers, meaning Mrs May needs the backing of almost every Tory and DUP MP. ♦theresa May has received a welcome Brexit boost after it emerged the European Union was preparing to back a fluid Irish border, which would minimise custom checks, according to The Times.