Brexiteers warn backstop deal is not enough
By Christopher Hope and
Theo Louloudis
BORIS JOHNSON has been warned by
senior Brexiteers including David Da-
vis that they might not support a po-
tential exit deal if he only succeeds in
stripping out the backstop.
Mr Davis, a former Brexit secretary,
said the Prime Minister would also
have to agree not to pay the full £39 bil-
lion Brexit bill and set a time limit on
the jurisdiction of the European Court
of Justice (ECJ).
Mr Johnson has identified the re-
moval of the backstop – which would
keep the UK in a customs union and the
Single Market after Brexit until a solu-
tion is found to prevent a hard border- as a key part of his plans to take the
UK out of the EU by Oct 31.
He told Donald Tusk, the European
Council president, this week, that he
was “confident that our Parliament
would be able to act rapidly if we were
able to reach a satisfactory agreement
which did not contain the ‘backstop’”.
However, Mr Davis told today’s
Chopper’s Brexit Podcast that he would
need to see more changes to win his
full support. Asked if he would back
the deal, he said: “I’d argue for contin-
gency on the money. I’d argue for
tighter limits, timetable limits, sunset
clauses on ECJ and things like that.
“I’d have a small shopping list. It
wouldn’t be a ridiculous one, but one I
think that any serious European Parlia-
ment and any European Council that
wants a deal could go with.
“If I were doing this for Boris, Iwould be insistent that they make the
bill – the £39 billion, the second half of
it – contingent on progress on the fu-
ture economic partnership.”
If a deal is agreed the bill is likely to
be less than the £39 billion suggested
in March because the UK is already five
months into the transition period
which was planned then.
Mr Davis suggested that the UK
would pay the first £10 billion on exit
and the last £20 billion when the future
partnership agreement is finalised.
“We should have in place a future
economic partnership, or the bones of
it anyway, so that we carry on with freetrade arrangements beyond that before
we pay the next £20 billion,” he said.
His concerns were backed by Sir Bill
Cash, the Tory chairman of the Euro-
pean scrutiny select committee. He
said: “We will be governed for a num-
ber of years by the other 27 member
states under the existing draft With-
drawal Agreement ... even with the
backstop removed.”
It came as 25 Labour MPs are ready
to vote with the Government to stop a
no-deal Brexit, a Tory MP in talks with
them has said. The source said the Op-
position MPs, predominantly in Leave-
voting seats, are ready to rebel againstJeremy Corbyn to back a Brexit deal –
but that Mr Johnson would only have
“one shot” to win their support.
Meanwhile Nick Boles, the inde-
pendent MP, declined Mr Corbyn’s in-
vitation for a cross-party meeting to
stop a no-deal Brexit. The former Tory
minister, who quit the party in April
over Brexit, warned against pursuing a
vote of no confidence, and pushed for
“legislative measures to stop no-deal”.
He said this would mean “seizing
control of the order paper and passing
an Act that compels the Prime Minister
to secure the agreement of the EU ... to
a further extension to Article 50”.Dublin and EU
in secret talks
over no-deal
customs checks
By James Rothwell in Donegal and
Christopher Hope in London
DUBLIN and Brussels are in secret
talks about imposing new customs
checks and controls at ports and facto-
ries as the likelihood grows of a no-deal
Brexit, it has emerged,
Checks will be at the “point of origin
or destination, so the factories or ports”
to ensure Ireland complies with strict
EU single market rules, European
Commission sources said.
Phil Hogan, the European commis-
sioner for agriculture and rural devel-
opment, said checks “could be at point
of origin or at point of destination”,
adding that 55 per cent of all exports
from Britain to Northern Ireland came
through Dublin Port and were already
automatically checked.
The disclosure came as Neale Rich-
mond, EU affairs spokesman for Ire-
land’s ruling Fine Gael party, said Mr
Johnson’s plans to rip up the Northern
Ireland backstop were a “fantasy” to
force Ireland to leave the Single Market.
He did not believe 30 days would be
enough time to solve the backstop. He
said: “We went through the report
[with Greg Hands, the Tory MP] in
great detail. It wants Ireland to essen-
tially break from the Single Market.”
Mr Richmond said some of the pro-
posals amounted to “fantasy” technol-
ogy, and that it did not include costs
and a clear timescale.
More than half of the members of the
Northern Ireland assembly have signed
a letter to Donald Tusk, the European
Council president, asking to keep the
backstop. The letter was signed by 49
of 90 MLAs, from Sinn Fein, the SDLP,
Alliance Party and the Green Party.
Simon Byrne, the Police Service of
Northern Ireland Chief Constable,
warned that “if there is a hard Brexit
this could play out in different commu-
nities right across Northern Ireland
and could become a trigger and fuel-
ling point for more people to join either
side of the debate, either the lawless
side of the argument or the dissident
and Irish Republican side”.
In the wake of police being targeted
in a bomb attack near the Irish border,
Mr Byrne said dissident Republicans
were resurgent and “intent” on mur-
dering a police officer. He pinned the
blame for this week’s murder attempt
on the Continuity IRA.
Former Brexit secretary
tells PM to push for cut in
divorce bill and limit on
length of ECJ jurisdiction
Buoyant Boris Raising his arms in apparent celebration, Boris Johnson returns to Downing Street from his trip to Germany and France. The Prime Minister
met Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron to discuss Brexit and commentators have said the short diplomatic visit has been a relative success.STEVE BACKPolitics
Today on Chopper’s
Brexit Podcast
Jacob Rees-Mogg
performs Telegraph
readers’ poems speciallycomposed to mark
Brexit on Oct 31 after the
Poet Laureate SimonArmitage refused to put
pen to paperplus former Brexit
secretary David DavisListen free on Apple Podcasts or
https://choppersbrexitpodcast.telegraph.co.uk/Mogg
egraph
speciallyo mark
1 after the
eSimoned to put
perBrexit
vid Davisssy on Chopper’s
exit Podcast
Mr Macron stared at Mr Johnson with the
grin of a shark eyeing up a succulent bather
F
or Boris Johnson, yesterday’s
meeting with Emmanuel Macron
must have been painful. Never
mind the Brexit talks. I’m talking
about the handshake.
It’s always the same, when Mr
Macron welcomes a fellow leader. No
matter who his guest is, the French
president is determined to show the
cameras that he, Macron, is top dog.
His body language is fascinating. It’s
so aggressive – even when he’sbeing friendly. He shakes hands
aggressively. He smiles aggressively.
He laughs aggressively. With restless,
angry energy, he bobs up and down on
the balls of his feet, like a boxer. At
every opportunity, he thumps his
guest on the back, as if the guest is
choking on a fish bone, and heroic Mr
Macron is swooping in to save the poor
sap’s life.
It’s all so extravagantly, theatrically
macho. He makes Vladimir Putin look
like Niles Crane.
Even by Mr Macron’s standards,
though, yesterday’s performance was
something special. Pulling up in front
of the Elysée Palace, Mr Johnson
tottered from his car – whereupon Mr
Macron strode up, seized the Prime
Minister’s right hand, and startedpumping it with such furious vigour
it’s a wonder it didn’t snap off.
He simply refused to release his grip.
He just kept on pumping away at Mr
Johnson’s helpless paw. He was still
pumping it while they posed side by
side for photos – and still pumping it,
somehow, while they were walking
towards the TV cameras. Only when
they were a few feet away did Mr
Johnson manage to free himself. His
poor wrist. He must have felt as if he’d
just gone five sets with Novak Djokovic.
The two men made brief statements.
Again, though, the real fascination lay
in the body language. Whenever Mr
Johnson was speaking, Mr Macron
would stare at him, unblinking, his
face spread with a peculiar grin. Not a
warm grin. It looked a wicked grin, ataunting grin, a hungry grin. The grin
of a shark, eyeing a particularly
succulent bather.
At one point yesterday, Mr Macron
declared that, among EU leaders,
“On m’a toujours dépeint comme le plus
dur de la bande”: in English, “I’ve
always been portrayed as the hardest
of the gang.”
Mr Johnson, though, seemed to take
this as a challenge – because, while his
tone remained jaunty, his own body
language became cartoonishly macho,
too. He jutted his jaw. He bunched his
fist. And, when the two men got down
to their talks, he was photographed
sitting with his legs spread so far apart
he was practically doing the splits.
As they say in France: deux can play
at that jeu.Sketch
By Michael Deaconh
4 ***^ Friday 23 August 2019 The Daily Telegraph
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