Boris Johnson’s withering attacks on May’s Brexit deal
Leading Brexit supporter Boris Johnson declared he has taken the “painful” decision to vote for Prime Minister Theresa May’s EU Withdrawal Agreement.
The former foreign secretary has been a vocal critic of Mrs May’s deal – here are some of his previous attacks on the plans:
2019
March 26 – Mr Johnson compared the UK’s efforts to leave the EU to the biblical struggle between Moses and Egypt’s pharoah and urged the country “to channel the spirit of Moses and Aaron in Exodus and say to the pharaohs of Brussels, ‘let my people go’.”
March 24 – In a Daily Telegraph column Mr Johnson branded the deal “rotten” and added: “There is only one plausible argument why we should now vote it through – and that is that every other option is now worse.”
March 17 – Mr Johnson wrote in the Telegraph that the deal was “detrimental to the country”.
March 10 – Writing in the Telegraph Mr Johnson said the Withdrawal Agreement would make the EU “our colonial masters”.
February 3 – Mr Johnson said the Withdrawal Agreement was an “appalling deal” that would leave the UK in “servitude” until 2020.
January 20 – Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Mr Johnson said the deal had been “kicked into orbit” after it had been rejected in the House of Commons. He added: “It will never get through Parliament because it is fundamentally anti-democratic.”
January 13 – The former foreign secretary wrote in the Telegraph that the deal was a “complete stinker”, the “worst of both worlds” and had “appalling defects”.
2018
December 2 – Mr Johnson described the backstop as a “great steel trap that is about to clamp its jaws around our hind limbs and prevent our escape” and an “instrument of blackmail” to keep the UK as “effective captives of the EU”.
November 25 – Mr Johnson wrote that the deal was a “disaster for the country”.
November 18 – He said in his Telegraph column that if MPs voted for the deal “we are bowing our neck to the yoke”. He added: “We are preparing to take colonial rule by foreign powers and courts.”
November 12 – Mr Johnson said the terms of the deal were such that “might be enforced on a colony” and warned: “On the present plans we will be a vassal state.”
September 27 – He described the Chequers proposals as “disastrous” and said: “Such enforced vassalage should be unacceptable to any democratic country.”
September 8 – Mr Johnson wrote in the Mail on Sunday that the Chequers plan had “wrapped a suicide vest” around the British constitution and “handed the detonator” to Brussels.
September 3 – He said that by adopting the Chequers proposals the UK had gone “into battle with the white flag fluttering over our leading tank”.
