Former foreign minister Boris Johnson has used his speech at the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham to hit back at UK prime minister Theresa May’s Chequers plan, calling it a “mistake” and urging his party to take back control of post-Brexit negotiations.
Former foreign minister Boris Johnson has used his speech at the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham to hit back at UK prime minister Theresa May’s Chequers plan.
That certainly felt right in the 1970s when we first joined the global market,” Johnson stated. “It makes much less sense in the globalized economy when 95 percent of the world’s growth will be outside the EU.”
Johnson commented on rising trade partnerships, namely with Latin America and Africa, stating that
“Think what we could do if we had proper free trade deals,” he lamented, adding that the UK faces the reality that it will become “more difficult, if not impossible to do such deals”.
“That’s why it was such a mistake of us to remain stuck in the terms of the Chequers deal, locked in the tractor beam of Brussels,” he continued.
He stated that the UK would not only be prevented from offering tariffs schedules and making its own laws, in addition to maintaining a “regulatory framework for goods [and] agriculture,” but called the Chequers deal “politically humiliating”.
He added that the UK economy would also be exposed to foreign regulations “expressly designed” to hinder their progress. “Whatever the EU came up with in the future […] all this nonsense… we would have to implement this with no ability to change or resist.
“That is not pragmatic. That is not a compromise. It is dangerous and unstable, politically and economically,” he continued. “That is not democracy. That is not what we voted for.”
Johnson continued to lash out at Brussels, accusing them of being aware of their intentions, stating that the European Union wanted to set an example with the UK to other countries wishing to leave the EU.
“What they want above all is to demonstrate to any other country that would dream of following suit that you cannot leave the EU without suffering adverse economic and political consequences,” he told audiences.
“What the Chequers proposals show is that the United Kingdom, for all its power and might […] was unable to ultimately take back control” he insisted, adding that “The UK will be paraded in manacles [like] Caratacus,” referencing the British chieftain that resisted Roman control of Britain under Emperor Claudius.
Sourse: sputniknews.com