Boris Johnson news: PM to prorogue parliament again amid EU concern over ‘problematic points’ in new Brexit border plan
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Boris Johnson’s government has now published details of proposals for a withdrawal agreement to take the UK out of the EU by the end of the month, but the European Commission quickly said that “problematic points” remained in the prime minister’s plans.
Emerging after the PM’s conference speech, the proposals drew swift criticism as “problematic” and failing to safeguard the interests of people and traders on the island of Ireland. “A lot of work is needed,” said Michel Barnier, while noting the concrete offer did constitute progress.
Mr Johnson’s plan, which he billed as a compromise for the UK, would mean customs checks on trade between Northern Ireland and the Republic as well as a regulatory control border down the Irish Sea. One manufacturers’ pressure group described the scheme, which would effectively create two borders, as “worse than no deal”.
The PM used his conference speech to say the UK must deliver Brexit because voters feel they’re being “taken for fools”. And attacking parliament, he claimed MPs “would have been voted out of the jungle by now” if politics was a reality TV show.
In the early evening, Downing Street confirmed plans to prorogue parliament again ahead of a new Queen’s Speech on 14 October.
While the Tory conference drew to a close in Manchester, the debate on the domestic violence bill continued in Westminster. Labour’s Rosie Duffield won praise for, and brought her colleagues to tears with, her account of her own experience of coercive control.
The Brexit referendum caused a man to have an acute psychotic illness, with him suffering a serious of hallucinations and delusions.
It’s the first reported case of Brexit-triggered psychosis, according to a new BMJ Case Reports study which warns political upheaval can take its toll on mental health.
Our science correspondent has the details.
Boris Johnson has already briefed “major EU capitals” about his Brexit plan and UK officials were said to have pleaded with EU counterparts to keep the details secret for now.
Little chance of that. It has also been reported Johnson wants a “two borders for four years” plan that will leave Northern Ireland in a relationship with Europe from the end of transition period in 2021 until 2025, according to The Daily Telegraph.
It would accept the need for both a regulatory border between Britain and Northern Ireland in the Irish Sea for four years and customs checks between the North and the Irish Republic.
And there’s been plenty of reaction coming out already.
Simon Coveney, Ireland’s deputy prime minister, said the reported plan was “no basis for an agreement” and “concerning to say the least”.
He said: “If there is a proposal that involves customs checks on the island of Ireland, that in itself is bad faith given the commitments the British government has given both to Ireland and the EU over the last three years.”
“The idea that you would be putting a customs border effectively between Northern Ireland and the Republic is not something that is consistent with that, or even close.”
Sources in Brussels have told The Independent that chief negotiator Michel Barnier would give short shrift to any offer that breached the negotiating mandate agreed by the remaining 27 EU states.
“If the concrete text is rubbish, I think Mr Barnier will not need much time to say that,” said one EU diplomat.
One EU official told The Guardian that “if it’s anything that looks like what was floated in this leak, it is going to go down like a bucket of sick.”
Another EU diplomat told The Telegraph: “The proposal means you need to do declarations for goods flowing between Great Britain and Northern Ireland and manage a new border between North and South.
“It leaves Northern Ireland marooned, with frictionless trade with no-one.”
More reaction. The Irish government has flatly rejected a leaked version of Boris Johnson’s Brexit plan for the Irish border, ahead of its official unveiling on Wednesday.
Our Europe correspondent Jon Stone has the details.
Stanley Johnson has been talking about his son, the prime minister.
“When we said come out we have to come out, and Boris is going to deliver that for the nation … so I’m backing Boris,” he told Sky News.
Asked about the prime minister’s reputation as a joker, his father said: “When a fellow from time to time makes a joke, when he from time to time livens up a room when he comes in … I mean, I like to make a joke but that doesn’t mean to say I haven’t read the most unbelievably boring books.”
“We Johnsons can be serious if we have to be,” he added.
“He is very serious about this – I lived with him for 20 years and watched this evolving Euroscepticism come to fruition. It’s not a rather light-hearted career move, I can promise you that. I lived with him in Brussels – we shared a house for a while.”
Despite his father Stanley’s remarks – “we Johnsons can be serious if we have to be” – there is some scepticism about whether Boris Johnson is really serious about reaching an agreement with the EU.
The former Northern Ireland negotiator Jonathan Powell has articulated that view best.
An audience member at a Conservative conference event addressed by Boris Johnson joked that Jeremy Corbyn should be hung, footage shows.
Video from a reception hosted by the DUP in Manchester also shows the Labour leader being branded a “traitor”.
Tory MP Steve Baker – chair of the ERG and self-appointed “Brexit hardman” – has been quoting Satan (from Milton’s Paradise Lost). That’s right, Satan.
The reasons for doing so aren’t entirely clear at the present time.
According to RTE’s Europe editor Tony Connelly, the European Commission will receive Boris Johnson’s Brexit proposals later this morning before David Frost, the UK’s chief negotiator, meets members of the Commission’s Article 50 Task Force this afternoon.
Michel Barnier, the EU's chief negotiator, will then swing into action.
The Northern Ireland secretary Julian Smith said the government had to be “very careful about upsetting” the “hard-won stability” anywhere along the Irish land border with its fresh backstop proposals.
“I think there are many things we will have to look at in the future relationship but I think the priority now is to get a deal which changes the Withdrawal Agreement but that makes sure we protect trade flows and the hard-won stability at the Irish border,” Smith told the BBC.
“At the border, five miles from the border, 10 miles from the border - the border is a broad area and we have to be very careful about upsetting it.”
Smith has begun speaking at the Tory conference in Manchester and has announced a growth deal funding for Northern Ireland.
Julian Smith speaks at Conservative conference (AFP)
Bridget Phillipson MP, leading supporter of People’s Vote, has responded to Boris Johnson’s Brexit plan – details of which emerged overnight.
“Few people will see these proposals as a serious offer designed to secure a Brexit deal, and it remains to be seen if the European Commission will even enter into formal negotiations over them,” said the Labour MP.
She said the PM “is ready to force Northern Ireland into a system of double frontiers that will uniquely disadvantage business as well as make the daily lives of those living on or near the border miserable or worse.
“It is a shocking subversion of repeated promises to avoid any hardening of the border in Ireland.”
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