Boris Johnson has written to European Council president Donald Tusk, setting out key aspects of his government’s approach to Brexit. The four-page letter has a number of positive points but also some worrying ones.
The good bits:
- The letter condemns the Irish backstop as undemocratic and inconsistent with both UK sovereignty and the Good Friday Agreement. It also rightly notes that the backstop would lock the UK into a customs union with the EU indefinitely with no means of escape.
- The letter also states that the UK government cannot continue to endorse the commitment its predecessor made in the Joint Report of December 2017 to ‘full alignment’ with wide areas of the single market and customs union.
- The letter makes clear that ‘when the UK leaves the EU…we will leave the single market and customs union’ and goes on to emphasise that the UK seeks to diverge from EU regulations in the future, noting that this ‘is the point of our exit’.
The worrying bits:
- The letter states that ‘the changes we seek [to the Withdrawal Agreement] relate primarily to the backstop.
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