No.10 hits back at Boris ‘car crash Brexit’ warning
Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn is under growing pressure to back a second referendum on any final Brexit deal. Political editor David Williamson reports...
DOWNING Street has slapped down Boris Johnson after he warned that Britain was heading for a “spectacular political carcrash” if the Government stuck to Theresa May’s plans for Brexit.
The former foreign secretary’s warning came as Mrs May gave one of her most positive forecasts yet for Britain’s future after Brexit, telling the BBC: “I believe that our best days are ahead of us.”
Asked in an interview for last night’s Panorama why she thought Brexit would be good for Britain, she replied: “It gives the United Kingdom opportunities as an independent and sovereign state to build a better future for all our people.”
But Mr Johnson warned that, unless Mrs May’s Chequers plan was dropped, Britain was “heading full throttle for the ditch with a total writeoff of Brexit”.
Requirements for a “backstop” arrangement at the Irish border,
contained in December’s agreement between Mrs May and European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker, would leave the UK a “vassal state” of the EU, the former foreign secretary warned.
In his regular column for the Daily Telegraph, Mr Johnson claimed that he and others had been “taken in” over the EU’s fallback option, having been privately assured at the time that it would never be invoked.
But Number 10 pointed out that Mr Johnson had himself signed up to the joint report agreed by Mrs May and Mr Juncker, including the backstop provision, and had remained in government for a further seven months afterwards.
The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: “Boris Johnson was a member of the cabinet which agreed to the December joint report, including the backstop.
“At the time, he congratulated the Prime Minister for her determination in securing the deal.
“He remained in Government for a full seven months after the joint report was agreed. He was also a member of the cabinet sub-committee which agreed the UK’s proposed customs backstop.”
Although she is signed up to the principle of a backstop if no better arrangement can be agreed, Mrs May has robustly rejected the version put forward by Brussels, which would see Northern Ireland remain within the EU customs area and effectively draw a customs border down the Irish Sea.
However, Mr Johnson denounced alternative plans set out by the PM as a “constitutional abomination” which would leave Britain as a “humiliated rules-taker”.
Mr Johnson has backed proposals by the pro-Brexit European Research Group that physical checks can be done away from the border, without keeping the UK or Northern Ireland tied to EU customs rules.
And it has been reported that the EU is preparing to accept use of technology to avoid the need for new border infrastructure.
Writing in The Daily Telegraph, Mr Johnson said: “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,” he added.
The EU’s backstop would leave a border down the Irish sea while the UK’s proposal left it “volunteering” to “remain effectively in the customs union and large parts of the single market until Brussels says otherwise”, Mr Johnson said.
“Both versions of the backstop are disastrous,” he wrote.
“One threatens the union; the other version, and its close cousin, Chequers, keep us effectively in the EU, as humiliated rules takers.
“We need to challenge the assumptions of both these Irish backstops, or we are heading full throttle for the ditch with a total write-off of Brexit.
“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 membership in all but name.”
Speaking to Panorama, Mrs May said there needs to be “friction-free” movement of goods across the Irish border, without customs or regulatory checks between the UK and EU, after Brexit.
“The only proposal that’s been put forward that delivers on them not having a hard border and ensures that we don’t carve up the United Kingdom, is the Chequers plan,” she said.
Mrs May also said she believes Parliament will vote for a deal to maintain a good trading relationship with the EU and co-operation on other matters.
But she cast doubt on whether the EU would offer a better deal if MPs rejected it, adding: “I believe we’ll
get a good deal, we’ll bring that back from the EU negotiations, put that to Parliament.
“I think the alternative to that will be not having a deal because a) I don’t think the negotiations will have that deal, and b) we’re leaving on March 29 2019.”
Mrs May stepped up efforts to win backing for the Chequers plan ahead of a gathering of EU leaders in Salzburg tomorrow and Thursday.
She welcomed Malta’s prime minister Joseph Muscat to Downing Street for talks ahead of the summit.
And Number 10 posted a video lasting almost seven minutes on social media in which the Prime Minister set out her plan.
EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier is drafting a new “protocol” text that includes the use of technology to minimise checks at the Irish border, according to The Times.
Diplomatic notes seen by the paper state: “The biggest unsolved problem is Northern Ireland.
“There is a political mobilisation in the UK in this regard. Therefore, we are trying to clarify the EU position.”
MAYOR of London Sadiq Khan’s backing for a second referendum is the latest sign that momentum may be escalating behind the push to give the electorate the final say on Brexit.
Labour backing for a referendum could be a game-changer. It would push the demand for a so-called people’s vote firmly into the centre of the political mainstream and position the Conservatives as the antireferendum party.
UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is already under pressure to back a vote, and he could find himself facing calls not just from the most senior party figure in London but from his Welsh counterpart.
Welsh Finance Secretary Mark Drakeford – who is seen as the frontrunner in the race to succeed Carwyn Jones – has said there should be a second vote if workers’ rights will not be protected. Fellow leadership hopefuls Vaughan Gething, Alun Davies, Huw Irranca-Davies and Eluned Morgan are all firmly behind another referendum.
Labour has so far refused to endorse a vote. Mr Corbyn came under intense internal criticism for his performance in the 2016 referendum – and he sacked Pontypridd MP Owen Smith as Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary after he backed a referendum – but the upcoming Labour conference will be an opportunity to gauge the strength of support for a change of policy in party ranks.
Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell has said he would prefer another general election to another referendum, but trade unions including the GMB and the Royal College of Nursing want a second vote.
Support for putting the issue to the country may be driven in large part by worries that Britain could be on course to leave the EU with either a deal that falls far short of what Labour activists would hope for or no deal at all. But realpolitik will also be at play.
Things have changed since that dizzying morning when people woke up across the UK and realised the likes of Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson and triumphed in their push for an Out vote.
The 2016 referendum result was a shock for Britain’s political class, many of whose foremost figures had toured the country making the case for staying in the EU. The 51.9% vote to leave was a rejection of their arguments that left the establishment reeling.
Labour had special cause for fear. Swathes of the former industrial areas had not just voted to leave but had displayed a readiness to vote Ukip.
Voters across Europe have turned their back on traditional centre-left parties and, in the United States, Donald Trump surfed a populist wave to the White House – was Labour in danger of losing hold of millions of supporters in Britain’s equivalent of the “rust belt”?
Since then, concern that Ukip poses a mortal threat to Labour has subsided as the post-Farage anti-EU party has suffered a series of fiascos and leadership elections.
Pro-referendum activists have invested intense efforts trying to convince Labour that support for a new referendum, far from alienating citizens, could prove a votewinner.
The Best for Britain campaign claims that in Wales 14 of the 40 constituencies have switched from backing leave to remain, meaning 25 MPs now represent seats where a majority of people now want to stay in the EU.
The campaign states: “Wales has seen a substantial change, with remain now leading leave by 55.1% to 44.9%... In Rhondda, 60% of people leave in 2016, but in another vote now, 50.4% would back remain.
“In Merthyr Tydfil, a 41.6% remain vote in 2016 rises to 51.3% now...In Swansea East a 12.8 point shift switches this seat from a leave majority in 2016 to 50.7% pro-remain now.”
Conservatives such as Aberconwy’s Guto Bebb and former Education Secretary Justine Greening have gone public with support a people’s vote. Labour will not want to see referendum-hungry voters peel off to support the likes of the pro-EU Lib Dems or Plaid Cymru.
Nevertheless, backing a referendum would still carry risks for Labour. The Conservatives would portray likely portray it as a betrayal of working people – and there would undoubtedly be exasperation in many neighbourhoods at the thought of having to trudge out to the polls yet again.
Downing St has said there will be “no second referendum in any circumstances” and senior Tory figures challenge Labour to rule out another vote. Tory chairman Brandon Lewis responded to the Mayor of London’s support for one by saying that a “rerun” would “take us all back to square one”.
Labour Shadow International Trade Secretary Barry Gardiner has expressed fears that backing a second referendum would give Theresa May would give her a “lifeline” as she scrambles to save her vision of Brexit because she could say: “Oh, if I can’t get it through Parliament I’ll go back to the people.”
But he also admitted that the “reason we have not ruled anything out is because nobody knows what’s going to happen over the next few weeks”.
That gets to the heart of the matter. Westminster faces weeks of profound uncertainty in which it is unclear whether Theresa May will strike a deal with Brussels that will stand a chance of getting the backing of Parliament; if she does try to win support in the Commons for an agreement that is opposed by more than a handful of Conservative MPs then Labour will have to decide whether to back it – thus preventing a no-deal Brexit – or try to create the situation in which there is a general election that could culminate in Mr Corbyn and Mr McDonnell moving into Downing St.
The leadership and every individual Labour MP faces an anguished task of working out what is best both for the country and their party – and right now impassioned and resourceful campaigners are telling them that another referendum is definitely best for Britain.