On Thursday, Rishi Sunak’s new post-Brexit agreement with the EU for Northern Ireland was criticized by Boris Johnson, who claimed the prime minister had let the organization to maintain an excessive amount of influence in the United Kingdom.
An earlier agreement by Johnson that imposed checks and paperwork on products arriving from the rest of Britain was partially undone by Sunak’s Monday agreement to loosen trade restrictions in the British-run province.
Johnson, who was forced to resign as prime minister last year as a result of several scandals, admitted that he was to blame for failing to foresee how “onerous” the checks would be.
He declared that he would be sympathetic if provincial officials decided to support the new agreement in an effort to restart the region’s power-sharing assembly.
Johnson, whose allies hold Sunak accountable for aiding in his ouster as prime minister, claimed the new accord did not go far enough and that he would find it difficult to support it.
“I’m going to find it extremely difficult to vote for anything like this personally because I believe that we should have done something else,” Johnson said, breaking his silence on the accord in a speech at the Global Soft Power Conference 2023.
“We need to be quite clear about the situation at hand. It’s not about the UK regaining power here. This is the EU being kindly unyielding to let us live our lives as we like in our own nation. By their laws, not ours.”
In response to a question regarding Johnson’s remarks, the prime minister’s spokesman said that while Sunak “understands that people will have questions and opinions,” he thinks it is the best agreement for the people of Northern Ireland.
The deal will be put to a vote in parliament. With the support of the opposition Labour Party, it should pass; yet, a rebellion within Sunak and Johnson’s Conservative Party might rekindle the severe ideological differences that have occasionally paralyzed the government since the 2016 EU referendum.
After Johnson’s remarks, sterling declined versus the US dollar and the euro, compounding earlier-day losses.
Although U.S. President Joseph Biden expressed concern about the political tensions escalating in Northern Ireland, Sunak had welcomed the agreement as momentous, one that enables Britain to put the Brexit disputes of recent years behind it and reset its relationships with the EU and the United States.
Success is expected to depend on its ability to persuade the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) to cease its boycott of Northern Ireland’s power-sharing arrangements. The Good Friday Agreement, which was signed in 1998 and largely put an end to three decades of conflict there, was built around these agreements.
Johnson expressed his optimism that the DUP, the biggest unionist party in the province, may come around to the idea and rejoin the Stormont power-sharing assembly. The DUP has not yet declared its vote intentions.
The 58-year-old Johnson, the face of the Brexit campaign in Britain, has argued that leaving the EU only makes sense if Britain fundamentally changes its economy. Johnson has clashed with Brussels over the nature of the UK’s departure for years.
He claimed that Sunak’s agreement undermined that objective by allowing the EU to operate as a “drag anchor” on Britain’s freedom to deviate from the bloc’s laws and regulations.
Johnson said that unless things are changed, there is no value in Brexit.
Any detour has been made more difficult by the necessity to keep the border open between EU member Ireland and Northern Ireland in order to uphold the peace agreement. Johnson had pushed for a tougher approach, keeping to a bill he had proposed that would essentially void his original agreement, the Northern Ireland protocol.
I can understand why so many people are drawn to adopting a compromise given that we have gotten rid of the bill, he said.
