Johnson calls for Irish Brexit backstop to be scrapped
By Frank Prenesti
Date: Tuesday 20 Aug 2019
(Sharecast News) - UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson repeated his call to scrap the backstop plan for the Irish border, describing it as "anti-democratic" in a letter to European Council President Donald Tusk.
Johnson, who is set to meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron, also claimed the backstop would weaken the Northern Ireland peace process.
However, Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar told Johnson there would be no renegotiation of the backstop. The two spoke for an hour by phone and, despite the stalemate on the key issue, agreed to meet in early September.
Johnson has long claimed an alternative can be found to the to the backstop - a key demand of Conservative Brexit ultras who maintain other technical solutions can be used to avoid border checks - even though opponents say there is no evidence of such a system in place anywhere in the world.
In his letter to Tusk, Johnson said the backstop was "anti-democratic and inconsistent with the sovereignty of the UK" as it kept Britain inside the customs union, despite the fact that he voted for it when previous prime minister Theresa May put it to MPs.
He said the backstop should be replaced with a commitment to put in place alternative arrangements as far as possible before the end of the Brexit transition period in December 2020.
If they were not in place by then Johnson said the UK was "ready to look constructively and flexibly at what commitments might help".
"Time is very short. But the UK is ready to move quickly, and, given the degree of common ground already, I hope the EU will be ready to do likewise," he wrote, adding that parliament "would be able to act rapidly if we were able to reach a satisfactory agreement which did not contain the backstop".
Johnson still held to his position that he would take Britain out of the EU without a deal on October 31 if necessary, despite a leaked government report forecasting food, fuel and medicine shortages and public unrest if he did so.
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