Redwood suggests UK ‘should break international treaty agreed with EU’

A Tory MP who voted for a Brexit agreement that requires Northern Ireland to follow EU rules to prevent checks at the border now wants the UK to tell the EU something different.

John Redwood said the Brexit minister should tell the EU that Great Britain will have control over goods sent to Northern Ireland.

Redwood said: “Lord Frost should tell the EU there will be no more EU checks on goods passing from GB to NI for NI use.

“This is internal trade which we will supervise. No need to invoke legal process, just enforce the EU’s statement they will respect our internal market.”

Reactions

But Twitter did not take his proposals well.

Graham Simpson said Redwood is suggesting the UK should break the international treaty the Tories agreed with the EU.

“I wonder why he voted for it?,” Simpson asked.

Meanwhile, Richard Tunnicliffe suggested Redwood did not read the Northern Ireland protocol.

“I mean, what are treaties anyway, when you think about it,” a Twitter user joked.

And former civil servant Siobhan Benita said Redwood is showing a “toxic combination of arrogance and ignorance that created this Brexit mess in the first place”.

“The EU should tell Frost to abide by the agreement he signed whether he understood it or not,” Steve Lawrence added.

One Twitter user said Frost negotiated an agreement which Redwood should have complained about before ratifying it, if he was unhappy with it. “Did you not read or understand the agreement?,” he asked.

Another user said: “The only way out of this situation is to #RejoinEU. If you don’t want that then this – the thing you voted for – is what you are stuck with. Honestly, we – the readers and vaguely sentient of Britain – have had enough of this.”

‘Cold mistrust’

Meanwhile, Brexit minister David Frost said conflict over UK’s deal with the EU risks creating “cold mistrust” with the bloc.

Frost insisted that the European Union should accept a “substantial and significant change” to the deal, according to PA news agency.

Earlier this summer, Frost admitted Brexiteers have been taken aback by decaying relationships with the European Union.

Frost said Leavers dreamed of a sovereign Britain, but still in good terms with the bloc, according to The Guardian.

Johnson insisted the Withdrawal Agreement signed last year must be renegotiated, blaming Brussels for ‘insufficient’ solutions after the European Commission published proposals believed to make the Northern Ireland protocol easier to implement.

And business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said the Northern Ireland protocol “isn’t written in stone” and added “a deal is a deal but it was not something that was going to last forevermore”.

The EU has already given the UK grace periods and the European Commission said it will not rewrite the legal text agreed with Johnson two years ago.

In April this year, EU officials voiced their concerns that the UK would not respect post-Brexit agreements.

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Andra Maciuca

Andra is a multilingual, award-winning NQJ senior journalist and the UK’s first Romanian representing co-nationals in Britain and reporting on EU citizens for national news. She is interested in UK, EU and Eastern European affairs, EU citizens in the UK, British citizens in the EU, environmental reporting, ethical consumerism and corporate social responsibility. She has contributed articles to VICE, Ethical Consumer and The New European and likes writing poetry, singing, songwriting and playing instruments. She studied Journalism at the University of Sheffield and has a Masters in International Business and Management from the University of Manchester. Follow her on: