Boris Johnson has publicly expressed doubt about Rishi Sunak’s new Brexit deal with the European Union, adding that his own previous deal also just ended up handing control to Brussels.
Speaking at the Global Soft Power Summit on Thursday, former prime minister Boris Johnson expressed his belief that both the government’s new Brexit deal, as well as his own previous agreement, ultimately just hand over power to the European Union.
It is perhaps the single largest blow to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s new ‘Windsor Framework‘ agreement with Brussels, which, although allowing the EU to maintain much control over Northern Ireland, has been well received by many in his own party.
The new arrangement has received a much frostier reception from hardline Brexiteers and pro-UK unionists in Northern Ireland however, with both having busied themselves with quietly considering whether or not to accept what is ultimately a compromise agreement.
Boris Johnson now appears to be one of the first major players within the Conservative (Tory) Party to break their silence, with Sky News reporting him as saying that he will personally find it “very difficult” to vote in favour of the deal in the British parliament, as he believes it will not do enough to shift power away from the EU.
“I’m going to find it very difficult to vote for something like this myself because I believe that we should have done something different,” he reportedly told the conference.
He went on to say that he “hopes” the new deal, despite his scepticism, “will work”, though added that should it not, the British government needs to “have the guts” to push for a unilateral abolition of EU powers in the region, as was initially planned in his government’s Northern Ireland Protocol Bill — now abandoned by Sunak to appease Brussels.
Boris Johnson did not spend his entire speech ripping into Rishi Sunak’s new Brexit deal, however, with the former prime minister admitting that his own Northern Ireland Protocol agreement had major shortcomings as well.
In particular, Johnson confessed that he had drastically underestimated the intensity of checks the EU would impose between Great Britain and Northern Ireland under the agreement, both admitting and expressing dismay at the fact that both businesses and individuals had found it difficult to move shipments and even parcels between the two halves of the United Kingdom.
“If the UK wanted to come out of the [EU] Customs Union and the EU Internal Market, and if we wanted to keep an open border across the island of Ireland — which we emphatically did for the sake of peace on the island and the Belfast-Good Friday Agreement — then we would have to make sure that we somehow checked all goods that might go from Great Britain to Northern Ireland, and then into Ireland, and that is what the Protocol does,” he said.
He went on to say that he did not think that the checks would not be “onerous” at the time he signed the agreement, but that the “cold steel reality of EU control” soon became apparent, with Brussels applying a “mad ban” on things like British sausages, potted plants, and tractors entering Northern Ireland.
“It’s all my fault,” he admitted. “I fully accept responsibility.”