...but a new Domshell as Cummings says PM always intended to break the deal
DOMINIC Cummings claimed yesterday that Britain never planned to stick to the Brexit deal it negotiated with Brussels.
The PM’s former chief aide said Boris Johnson ‘never had a Scooby-Doo’ what his Withdrawal Agreement with the EU really meant – nor even grasped what the customs union was until November last year.
He said the Government intended to ‘ditch’ the parts it didn’t like after ‘whacking’ Jeremy Corbyn in the 2019 general election.
The claims prompted Ireland’s deputy premier Leo Varadkar to say Britain appeared to have acted in bad faith and could not be trusted over future international trade deals.
Mr Cummings tweeted that when Mr Johnson became PM, the ‘deep state’ was angling for ‘Brino’ [Brexit in name only] or a second referendum.
‘So we wriggled through with the best option we could and intended to get the trolley [his nickname for the PM] to ditch bits we didn’t like after whack
ing Corbyn. We prioritised.’ During the election campaign, Mr Johnson boasted that his Brexit deal – including the Northern Ireland Protocol – was ‘great’ and ‘oven ready’.
But Mr Cummings said that when Mr Johnson finally realised the true implications of the deal, he said he would never have agreed to it – although the ex-aide said that was a lie.
He said he was not suggesting the PM lied in the election, but rather ‘never had a Scooby-Doo what the deal he signed meant’.
Mr Varadkar said: ‘Those comments are very alarming because that would indicate that this is a government, an administration, that acted in bad faith and that message needs to be heard around the world.’
Asked about Mr Cummings’ comments yesterday, Brexit chief Lord Frost insisted that everyone in the Government understood ‘extremely well’ what the deal meant.