Any assurances Britain secures from the European Union on the Irish backstop in the Brexit divorce deal will be \u00ab\u00a0completely irrelevant\u00a0\u00bb if they are not in the Withdrawal Agreement, eurosceptic lawmaker Jacob Rees-Mogg said on Monday.<\/b>
\nLONDON (Reuters) – Any assurances Britain secures from the European Union on the Irish backstop in the Brexit divorce deal will be \u201ccompletely irrelevant\u201d if they are not in the Withdrawal Agreement, eurosceptic lawmaker Jacob Rees-Mogg said on Monday.
He said the chance of Britain leaving the EU without a deal had increased after Prime Minister Theresa May delayed a vote in parliament on the agreement and said she would instead go back to the EU to seek further reassurances.
\u201cAnything that is not physically in the treaty is \u2018junior law\u2019, so if the prime minister comes back with a statement, warm words, it\u2019s completely irrelevant because the treaty outranks it,\u201d Rees-Mogg told reporters. \u201cUnless it\u2019s an amendment to the treaty, it\u2019s pointless.\u201d
The strongest opposition to May\u2019s deal centers around the so-called backstop, an insurance policy designed to prevent a hard border between EU member Ireland and British-ruled Northern Ireland.
Rees-Mogg echoed the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which is supposed to prop up May\u2019s government but is committed to voting against her deal, by saying the backstop had to be removed entirely.
\u201cIt would be transformative if the backstop were removed. But, this is the whole backstop, this isn\u2019t some paragraph saying it will finish in 2025 or something. It has to be out, because no one would believe the 2025 date,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n