Boris Johnson grilled on Brexit plan

Our live coverage is over for the day. Read Luke McGee’s analysis of Boris Johnson’s latest Brexit plan here.

European Council President Donald Tusk has spoken to both Leo Varadkar and Boris Johnson on Thursday.

Tusk once again stressed the EU was united behind Ireland. This is crucial: Ireland is a small member state and the circumstances make it vulnerable. It needs support from Brussels and the biggest member states, including Germany and France.

Ireland is the only state with a land border with the UK. That border was at the center of a decades-long conflict between Northern Ireland and Ireland; now it’s at the center of the Brexit deadlock.

Here is a reminder that it’s not just the opposition and the EU who seem fairly pessimistic about Boris Johnson’s new Brexit proposals.

Hard-core Brexiteers, led by Nigel Farage, are also criticizing the plan, calling it “Fake Brexit.”

Farage and his Brexit Party would prefer the UK to leave the European Union without a deal – an event economists say would hurt the UK economy.

European Parliament’s Brexit Steering group has said the Brexit proposal presented to the EU by Boris Johnson “do not match even remotely what was agreed as a sufficient compromise in the backstop.”

Europe’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier met the members of European Parliament’s Brexit Steering group on Thursday, to brief them on Boris Johnson’s latest proposals.

Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said Boris Johnson’s Brexit plans “fall short in a number of aspects.”

Varadkar said he failed to see how, under the proposal, Northern Ireland and Ireland could operate under different customs regimes without customs posts.

“No one party should be able to block the majority view on the island,” he said, referring to the fact that the plan seems to be aimed at pleasing the DUP.

 “Any consent mechanism and democracy mechanism must reflect the views of the majority of people in Ireland and Northern Ireland,” said the Taoiseach.

Varadkar pointed out a contradiction in Johnson’s statements.

“I’m reassured by what PM Johnson said, that he’s not proposing that there’ll be any new physical infrastructure on the island of Ireland linked to customs or custom checks. But that is actually in contradiction to the papers presented by the UK Gov yesterday.”

Johnson’s proposals mention the need for a small number of physical checks.

Here’s where the semantics come to play.

While a “small number” “away from the border” means “no new checks” to Johnson, it seems to mean something completely different to Varadkar.

“We do not want to see any customs posts between north and south, nor do we want to see any tariffs or restrictions on trade between north and south,” he said.

The Liberal Democrats’ Brexit spokesman, Tom Brake, tweeted that manufacturers in Northern Ireland have said they are being “thrown under the bus” by Boris Johnson’s plans, and have described them as “an existential threat.”

In Ireland, meanwhile, things are not looking great for Boris Johnson’s latest proposal.

Irish Deputy Prime Minister, or Tanaiste, Simon Coveney, has said that if the plan is Johnson’s final proposal, then there will be no deal.

Coveney said that “Ireland has not been treated well” during the Brexit process so far.

Angela McGowan, the head of the CBI Northern Ireland, a business lobby, said the proposal could lead to more uncertainty for businesses across Ireland and Northern Ireland.

That’s because under the plan, the rules would be reviewed periodically in order to make sure people in Northern Ireland agree with them.

McGowan said:

“Reviewing trading arrangements every four years will make an already tough environment for investors even more difficult. 
With time ticking away and no deal nudging ever closer, talks between the UK and EU need to produce clarity – and fast.”

The topic is crucial, the opinions are divisive. But the tone in which the discussion is taking place in Parliament on Thursday is calm, at least compared to the circus of the past few weeks.

Just last week, a furious Boris Johnson shouted at his opponents, using words like “surrender” and “betray.” The opposition was talking about a “coup.”

Johnson even dismissed as “humbug” the concerns of one MP, Paula Sherriff, who asked him to recall the politically motivated murder three years ago of a Labour lawmaker, Jo Cox.

On Thursday, everyone appeared to have taken their foot off the gas a little – much to the relief of Speaker John Bercow, who has lost his voice.

Boris Johnson keeps calling the proposal he sent to the European Union “a deal.”

There is just one slight problem with that. There is no deal, the European Union has not agreed to anything yet, in fact, the first reactions to the proposal in Brussels were rather lukewarm.

Anna Soubry, the leader of the Independent Group for Change, criticized Boris Johnson’s proposals on Thursday and said the Prime Minister “hasn’t got any support of the European Union or Northern Ireland.”

“The DUP do not represent the people of Northern Ireland and I observe they can’t be bothered to turn up today,” she added to cheers from the House.

Following the 2017 election, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) of Northern Ireland propped up the Conservative government in Westminster. Then last month Johnson removed the party whip from 21 MPs who defied him over Brexit, and the DUP’s support was no longer needed.

On Wednesday, the DUP said the offer “provides a basis for the EU to continue in a serious and sustained engagement with the UK government without risk to the internal market of the United Kingdom.”

Johnson’s predecessor Theresa May is in the House of Commons for the debate. And she doesn’t look too hopeful about Boris Johnson’s new proposals.

May negotiated a Brexit deal with the European Union, only to have it rejected by Parliament three times.

That deal included the so-called Irish backstop – a clause preventing the return of a hard border to Ireland.

Johnson’s proposal is an attempt to ditch the backstop and find an alternative.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said once again that the United Kingdom will leave the European Union as planned on October 31.

“With or without a deal,” the PM said.

However, there is one issue with that promise – a law preventing him from doing just that.

To prevent the country from crashing out of the EU without a deal, Parliament has passed a law, known as the Benn Act, that requires the Prime Minister to ask for a delay if no deal is agreed by October 19. 

Jo Swinson, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, said that for people in Northern Ireland, physical checks are not acceptable – wherever they take place.

The SNP’s leader in Westminster, Ian Blackford, has accused the Prime Minister of designing the proposal in a way that makes it impossible for the European Union to accept.

These proposals are unacceptable.
Prime Minister knows that he can’t get this proposal approved, and he doesn’t care. Because the truth is the Prime Minister either has no interest in getting a deal or doesn’t grasp the reality of a workable backstop.
It is all about blaming someone else. In this case, the European Union. The plan is designed to fail.”

Boris Johnson has warned the EU that if the UK leaves the EU without a deal it will be a “failure of statecraft for which all parties will be held responsible.”

He called on MPs to come together “in the national interest” so the country can move on from Brexit.

He said his government has “shown great flexibility.”

In his response to Johnson’s statement, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is rubbishing the PM’s proposals:

Corbyn says the new plan jeopardizes peace in Northern Ireland, leads to a race to the bottom on workers’ rights and health, safety and environmental regulations.

The Prime Minister is once again admitting some custom checks will be necessary in Ireland under his proposed plan.

But he is downplaying the need for checks at the border:

There will be no need for checks or any infrastructure at or near the border .. I’ve already given a guarantee that the UK government will never conduct checks at the border. And we believe that the EU should do the same. So there is absolute clarity on that point.

But he also said this:

Instead, under this new protocol, all custom checks between Northern Ireland and Ireland would take place either electronically or in the small number of cases where physical checks would be necessary, they would happen at traders’ premises or other points in the supply chain.

This is crucial. Ireland, and with it the rest of the European Union, has previously insisted that it cannot allow any checks, no matter where they take place. They argue that physical checks would breach the 1998 peace deal known as the Good Friday Agreement.

Privately, most EU diplomats think Johnson’s claim that his plan doesn’t breach the Good Friday Agreement is nonsense. And if the alternative solutions to the Irish question existed, we’d have probably seen them in the past three years.

There’s a growing sense that Johnson’s plan might be less a serious proposal to break the deadlock and more a political trap for the EU.

Read the full analysis here.

The Prime Minister has launched straight into his statement.

He opened by admitting the plan doesn’t have “everything we wished for” in it, saying it is a compromise.

He said:

Our starting point is that this house promised to respect the referendum before people voted to leave. Both main parties promised at the 2017 election that they would respect the referendum and that there would be no second referendum.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson is addressing Parliament.

He will outline the new Brexit proposals he sent to the European Union. After that, the PM will answer lawmakers’ questions.

John Bercow, the Speaker of the House of Commons, has lost his voice.

Known for his loud proclamations of “OOOOORRRRDEEEEER” and an ability to shout louder than the other 649 MPs combined, Bercow currently sounds a bit like a crow.

This potentially bodes disaster for parliamentary proceedings later on Thursday. With Prime Minister Boris Johnson set to outline his controversial Brexit plan to Parliament, we are expecting the chamber to get very noisy.

One MP, Peter Bone, asked whether the Speaker should not chair debates next week to protect his health.

“Dream on,” Bercow replied.

Across the street from Parliament, the UK Treasury has become the latest victim of an Extinction Rebellion action.

With the help of a fire engine, the climate activists have sprayed the building with 1,800 liters of fake blood.

Downing Street confirmed that the Cabinet meeting during which Prime Minister Boris Johnson briefed his team on the latest developments is now over.

Next up: Parliament. The Prime Minister is scheduled to take the floor in about 30 minutes.

Lawmakers in the UK Parliament are discussing the government’s plan to suspend Parliament once again.

The government said it wants to end the current parliamentary session on October 8. A new session would start six days later on October 14 with a Queen’s Speech, which sets out the government’s legislative agenda.

The planned suspension, which must be approved by the Queen, would be for “the shortest time possible,” the government said.

It comes just over a week after its last attempt to suspend Parliament was ruled unlawful.

The opposition MP Valerie Vaz said that prorogation should have been scheduled for Wednesday night to allow for Prime Minister’s Questions. She said the proposed schedule will mean Boris Johnson will have attended only one of four possible PMQs.

It’s worth pointing out that Boris Johnson doesn’t have much time to get his new proposal through.

Not only does he have to convince the remaining 27 EU members to agree to it, he also needs to push it through Parliament.

Brexit is scheduled for October 31 – just four weeks from now.

A crucial European summit is scheduled for October 17. It is at this meeting that the European leaders could, in theory, agree a final deal.

That timetable leaves Boris Johnson with just 14 (probably very busy) days to negotiate.

Guy Verhofstadt, the Brexit coordinator for the European Parliament, struck a somewhat harsher tone.

“I can tell you the reaction of the Brexit Steering Group was not positive. Not positive in the sense that we don’t really thinks this is a safe guard that Ireland needs.”

The EU’s Brexit Steering Group is set to discuss the plan in detail on Thursday. Verhofstadt said the group will then release a written statement on the proposal.

The first reactions to Johnson’s proposal from European leaders were far from optimistic.

Ireland’s Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said the proposals “do not fully meet the agreed objectives of the backstop.”

The President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker said the new plan offers some “positive advances,” but added “there are still some problematic points that will need further work in the coming days.”

The EU’s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier said: “No deal will never be the choice of the EU, never. So we will continue to reach a deal and to work with the UK team.”

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has presented his new Brexit proposal to European leaders on Wednesday.

His goal is to ditch the “Irish backstop.”

That’s the part of the Brexit agreement meant to prevent the reintroduction of a hard border between Northern Ireland, a part of the UK, and the Republic of Ireland, which will remain an EU member after Brexit.

Instead of the backstop, Johnson is proposing the following:

Northern Ireland to remain part of a regulatory union with Ireland.

What this means: If regulation is the same on both sides, there won’t be a need for regulatory checks on goods traded across the border.

The UK, including Northern Ireland, to leave the EU’s customs union.

What this means: Leaving the customs bloc is necessary if the UK wants to be able to strike its own trade deals. It also satisfies the Northern Irish DUP party, which wants to preserve the unity of the UK.

Any necessary checks to happen away from the border, on decentralized basis, for example at traders’ premises, or “along the supply chain”.

What this means: The sticking point. Johnson conceded on Wednesday that if there is a customs union border in Ireland, a “very small number of physical checks” will be needed. He argues that these can happen away from the border, bypassing the need for any new infrastructure. However, Ireland (backed by the whole EU), has previously insisted that border checks are border checks, regardless of where they take place.