Brexit: Foreign secretary Boris Johnson tears into Prime Minister Theresa May’s “crazy” customs partnership plan over control fears
Boris Johnson has publicly slammed the Prime Minister’s preferred option for a future customs relationship with the EU, describing it in an interview as “a crazy system”.
The foreign secretary has made no bones about preferring the second of the two options, known as ‘max fac’, in which trusted traders can move freely across borders, while Theresa May has been pushing for the customs partnership, in which the UK would collect tariffs on behalf of Brussels.
Read more: Cutting through the customs union noise: What are the two options on the table?
However in a bold step, Johnson has categorically rejected the idea.
“If you have the new customs partnership, you have a crazy system whereby you end up collecting the tariffs on behalf of the EU at the UK frontier,” Johnson told the Daily Mail.
“If the EU decides to impose punitive tariffs on something the UK wants to bring in cheaply, there’s nothing you can do. That’s not taking back control of your trade policy, it’s not taking back control of your laws, it’s not taking back control of your borders and it’s actually not taking back control of your money either, because tariffs would get paid centrally back to Brussels.”
The Cabinet minister added: “It’s totally untried and would make it very, very difficult to do free trade deals.”
Johnson is not the first person to criticise the concept – backbencher Jacob Rees-Mogg recently said it was “completely cretinous” and his European Research Group wrote to May urging her to drop the “undeliverable” idea or risk destroying her government.
However, this is the first time a Cabinet minister has so categorically attacked one of the two official options, which Number 10 has repeatedly said are both still in play.
Last week’s Brexit war Cabinet ended in deadlock after new attendees home secretary Sajid Javid and defence secretary Gavin Williamson both sided with the Brexiteers on max fac, while chancellor Philip Hammond and business secretary Greg Clark backed the Prime Minister.