UK Brexit minister issues ‘no deal’ warning
BRITAIN’S Brexit minister Dominic Raab has said the UK will be left with ‘no choice’ but to leave the EU without a deal if the bloc tries to lock the UK into the Customs Union.
In a strongly worded speech to fellow Tories yesterday that will set alarm bells ringing for Irish negotiators, Mr Raab warned that the UK would not be ‘bullied’ into signing a ‘one-sided agreement’.
Theresa May’s Conservatives remain deeply divided over the way forward with Brexit talks – which have stalled over the issue of a customs agreement for Northern Ireland.
But Mr Raab left no doubt that she is not for turning on the terms of Britain’s exit from the EU in his keynote speech at the Conservative Party Conference, where attacks on the bloc were a key feature this year.
‘We are leaving the European Union in fact, not just in name,’ Mr Raab told his colleagues.
‘If an attempt is made to lock us in via the back door of the EEA [European Economic Area] and Customs Union... or if the only offer from the EU threatens the integrity of our union, then we will be left with no choice but to leave without a deal.’
The EU’s interpretation of a ‘backstop’ envisions Northern Ireland remaining in the Customs Union, maintaining the same checks and balances that apply in the Republic as a means of avoiding a hard border.
But Mrs May has rejected this proposal as something ‘no UK prime minister could agree to’, arguing it breaks up the union by cutting off Northern Ireland – a position widely seen as being influenced by the Tory government’s reliance on the Democratic Unionist Party.
Mr Raab told Sky News: ‘What we’re not going to do is see the United Kingdom carved up into two separate customs regimes... that is just not on the table. Frankly, I think it’s outrageous even to contemplate it. We need to see a bit less dry legalism and dry dogmatism and a bit more of the flexibility that we have demonstrated in our white paper.’
The UK has yet to offer its own alternative proposals for the backstop, but yesterday Mr Raab was insistent that the EU will have to make further compromises. ‘If they want a deal, the EU need to get serious, and they need to do it now,’ he said to rapturous applause. The two-day conference was marked by a ratcheting up of the anti-EU sentiment that currently pervades the Tory party.
On the first day of the conference on Sunday, British foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt sparked widespread condemnation when he compared the EU to the Soviet Union.
‘The EU was set up to protect freedom. It was the Soviet Union that stopped people leaving,’ he said. ‘The lesson from history is clear: if you turn the EU club into a prison, the desire to get out won’t diminish, it will grow – and we won’t be the only prisoner that will want to escape.’
Yesterday, Mr Raab also used his speech to give qualified support for Mrs May’s Brexit plan – the same plan that was rejected by the EU in Salzburg a fortnight ago. ‘We’ve been reasonable, some say too reasonable. But our proposals would deliver a historic agreement that provides a roadmap out of the EU and a final deal that will be good for the whole country,’ he said.
‘Do I think the deal we are pursuing is perfect? Of course not. Is it everything I wanted? No, it isn’t. This is a negotiation.’
Meanwhile, Boris Johnson was ridiculed by members of his own party yesterday after a stunt in which he was photographed running through a field of wheat, in a clear dig at Theresa May.
Mrs May previously made headlines for her response to the question, ‘What is the naughtiest thing you ever done?’ – to which the embarrassed leader replied: ‘Run through fields of wheat.’
Following the flamboyant Brexiteer’s bizarre behaviour, chancellor of the exchequer Philip Hammond claimed Mr Johnson could not do ‘grown-up politics’.
‘The EU needs to get serious’