Boris Johnson takes swipe at Rishi Sunak’s Brexit deal

Boris Johnson criticises Sunak’s new Brexit deal for Northern Ireland

Boris Johnson took a dig at Rishi Sunak’s Brexit deal as he warned the UK is still stuck in the EU’s orbit.

The former Prime Minister made the comments in his latest Daily Mail column about a cage fight between tech billionaires Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.

Mr Johnson described the proposed showdown between the pair as a “display of risk-taking and aggression that tells us a lot about America, about the direction of the world economy – and about the great choices facing Brexit Britain”.

He highlighted how the US’s economy has outstripped the EU and the UK combined despite having around 100 million fewer people.

He said one of the key reasons he backed Brexit was to break free from the “tired and failing European economic model”.

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In a pop at Mr Sunak’s Brexit deal on Northern Ireland, Mr Johnson wrote: “Well, folks, seven years on and – partly thanks to Covid – we have still not achieved escape velocity; we are still being held in the gravitational pull of the EU, and (I might as well say it) agreements like the Windsor Framework don’t help, because they make it more difficult for the whole of the UK, including Northern Ireland, to be different from the EU’s regimes.”

Mr Johnson said the UK has “made a start” by diverging on biosciences and financial services.

But he called for Britain to go “further and faster” to show it is “radically different” from the bloc.

Mr Johnson warned against the hike in corporation tax, saying the UK should undercut Ireland’s low rates to encourage wealth creation.

He said: “We need to show that we actually admire and appreciate the madcap spirit of adventure that has propelled these cage fighters to their billions.

“We need to unleash in this country the originality and energy that has created these American giants – including the willingness to say or do the unthinkable.

“Because if we don’t we will end up in a woker, duller, poorer country, still magnetically linked to a woker, duller, poorer Europe.”

The Prime Minister struck his Windsor Framework in February in a bid to resolve problems with the Northern Ireland Protocol.

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Mr Johnson previously took aim at the deal warning it does not “take back control”.

In a speech at a global soft power summit in Westminster in March, he said: “I’m conscious I’m not going to be thanked for saying this, but I think it is my job to do so: we must be clear about what is really going on here.

“This is not about the UK taking back control, and although there are easements this is really a version of the solution that was being offered last year to Liz Truss when she was foreign secretary.

“This is the EU graciously unbending to allow us to do what we want to do in our own country, not by our laws but by theirs.”

Mr Johnson was among 22 MPs to vote against the agreement in the Commons later that month.

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