British Prime Minister Boris Johnson "never understood" the implications of the Exit Agreement agreed with the European Union (EU), including the Northern Irish protocol, which is the object of friction between the two blocs, said his former adviser Domminic Cummings on Wednesday.
Whoever the "right hand" de Johnson has once again used his Twitter account to criticize with several messages the role of the Tory leader in the 2019 negotiations on the controversial mechanism, which keeps London and Brussels at odds.
It has done so after the British Secretary of State for Brexit, David Frost, yesterday again in Lisbon urged the EU to renegotiate the then agreed conditions regarding the Northern Irish border, in order to improve relations.
Today, in addition, the European Commission is expected to present a proposal to try to solve the problems arising from the application of the protocol.
According to Cummings, Boris Johnson never understood the true implications of that mechanism and his idea, after beating Labor in the 2019 general election, was "discard the parts you don’t like" (of the agreement).
During the pre-election campaign, Johnson repeatedly proclaimed that the pact negotiated with Brussels, which included the aforementioned protocol, was a "great deal", which was "ready to be signed".
"What I have said does not mean that the prime minister lied in the 2019 elections, he never had a clue what that agreement he had signed meant. He never understood what it meant to leave the customs union until November 2020"Cummings points out.
Added that "when the prime minister finally understood (the implication of the protocol), he was saying that he would never have signed it if he had understood it (although that was a lie)".
Cummings, considered the mastermind of the campaign in favor of the UK’s withdrawal from the EU prior to the Brexit referendum in 2016, says that when Johnson took over the country, the UK was undergoing his "worst constitutional crisis in a century".
The protocol links the British province of Northern Ireland to the single Community market, so goods crossing from Great Britain have to undergo customs controls at the ports of the region in order to avoid a physical border with the Republic of Ireland, which is key to protecting the peace process and the island’s economy.
However, London again postponed, for the third time unilaterally, the post-Brexit customs controls in Northern Ireland last September, a matter that had already led to the opening of a file with the United Kingdom in Brussels, after which both parties dealt with now to find a consensus.
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