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Boris Johnson Now Needs Parliament to Back Brexit Deal Boris Johnson Has a Brexit Deal. Now He Needs Parliament’s Support.
(about 1 hour later)
BRUSSELS — Britain and the European Union agreed on the draft text of a Brexit deal on Thursday, an 11th-hour breakthrough in Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s effort to settle his country’s anguished, yearslong debate over Brexit and pave the way for its departure from the bloc. BRUSSELS — Britain and the European Union on Thursday agreed on the draft text of a Brexit deal, setting up a fateful showdown in the British Parliament on Saturday, where it was not clear that Prime Minister Boris Johnson could marshal the votes to nail down his plan after three anguished and politically damaging years of debate.
The deal, details of which were published shortly after the announcement, must still clear several hurdles, including approval from Europe’s leaders and, most crucially, passage in the British Parliament. Mr. Johnson’s predecessor, Theresa May, had also struck a deal with Brussels but suffered three thunderous defeats in Parliament. But Mr. Johnson may not even care whether Parliament approves his plan. Even if he loses, analysts say, he may call for a general election, hoping voters will rally behind him and deliver him a strong majority.
Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party, seen as vital to the passage of the agreement in Parliament, said it did not support the agreement. And the opposition Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, called on members of Parliament to reject it, saying, “It seems the prime minister has negotiated an even worse deal than Theresa May’s.” However it comes out, it all suggests a recipe for continued political tumult over at least the next weeks and months.
Mr. Johnson announced the agreement on Twitter, saying that the parties had reached a “great new deal that takes back control” and that Parliament would now be clear to vote on the agreement on Saturday. Critically, Northern Ireland’s influential Democratic Unionist Party refused to support Mr. Johnson’s deal, depriving him of the most obvious path to a Parliamentary majority. It said in a statement that the proposal “drives a coach and horses through the professed sanctity of the Belfast Agreement.”
Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Commission’s president, confirmed that a deal had been struck and noted that a revised arrangement on Northern Ireland had been reached. The statement argued that it would hurt Northern Ireland’s economy and undermine the integrity of the Union. The 1998 agreement, also known as the Good Friday Agreement, halted deadly sectarian violence and established a truce with the British government.
He wrote on Twitter: “Where there is a will, there is a #deal — we have one! It’s a fair and balanced agreement for the EU and the UK.” The opposition Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, urged members of Parliament to reject the deal, saying, “It seems the prime minister has negotiated an even worse deal than Theresa May’s.”
Britain’s frantic efforts to negotiate a Brexit agreement with the European Union had appeared to hit a last-minute snag after the D.U.P. said in a statement on Thursday morning that it could not support the deal “as things stand.” But Prime Minister Leo Varadkar of Ireland backed the deal, writing on Twitter that the draft agreement was “good” for Ireland and Northern Ireland. “No hard border. All-island and East-West economy can continue thrive. Protects Single Market & our place in it,” he added.
The statement, hours before Mr. Johnson was to present the deal to European leaders at a summit meeting in Brussels, suggested that domestic politics once again threatened to torpedo the complex negotiations. Mr. Johnson was ebullient on Thursday in a news conference alongside Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Commission president. “This deal represents a very good deal both for the E.U. and for the U.K.,” he said. “And it’s a reasonable fair outcome.”
Later, the D.U.P. reiterated that it would not back Mr. Johnson’s draft deal in a vote in Parliament. It said in a statement that the proposal “drives a coach and horses through the professed sanctity of the Belfast Agreement,” would hurt Northern Ireland’s economy and undermine the integrity of the Union. The 1998 agreement, also known as the Good Friday Agreement, halted deadly sectarian violence and established a truce with the British government. For his part, Mr. Juncker said: “I’m happy about the deal, but I’m sad about Brexit.”
It was unclear whether the Northern Irish party simply wanted to make a show of holding out for its position before ultimately acquiescing — or whether Mr. Johnson faced a serious rebellion from the skeptics in his ranks. Mr. Johnson appears to be betting that he can cobble together enough votes from lawmakers who are fed up with the endless wrangling and may view his deal, however imperfect, as better than any alternative.
Mr. Johnson may have an advantage over his predecessor in securing parliamentary approval for the deal, because he has assiduously cultivated the most skeptical elements of his party. It is a breathtaking gamble by a buccaneering leader who has already upended Britain’s political establishment in his quest to take Britain out of the European Union — shutting down Parliament for several weeks, purging rebels in his Conservative Party and drawing a rare rebuke from Britain’s Supreme Court.
For days, Mr. Johnson had worked frantically to bridge a gap over the thorny question of how to treat Northern Ireland in a post-Brexit Europe — a fiendishly complex issue that helped torpedo Mrs. May’s agreement and could still fracture Mr. Johnson’s Conservative-led coalition in Parliament. Mr. Johnson’s agreement also hinges on winning the approval of the leaders of the 27 other European Union members, who gathered in Brussels on Thursday for a two-day summit meeting. That seemed simpler, given the significant concessions that Britain made in days of frantic negotiations, mainly over how to treat Northern Ireland.
People briefed on the talks said Mr. Johnson had given significant ground on the structure of a customs unions that would allow Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom, to continue to trade seamlessly with Ireland and other members of the European Union. “We’ve got a great new deal that takes back control,” Mr. Johnson said earlier Thursday as he prepared to fly to Brussels. He assured European leaders that he would be able to win approval for it in Parliament.
Prime Minister Leo Varadkar backed the deal, writing on Twitter that the draft agreement was “good” for Ireland and Northern Ireland. “No hard border. All-island and East-West economy can continue thrive. Protects Single Market & our place in it,” he added. Mr. Juncker praised the draft deal as a “fair and balanced agreement for the E.U. and the U.K.,” and expressed confidence that it would pass muster with the leaders.
It was a dramatic culmination to down-to-the-wire talks that began on Tuesday morning, with some European officials predicting that the two sides would not be able to close the gap on customs issues in time to finalize a draft deal before the critical summit meeting of European leaders on Thursday and Friday. Mr. Johnson may also be gambling that the European Union, anxious to wash its hands of Brexit, will refuse to give Britain another extension, confronting Parliament with the difficult choice of embracing this deal or crashing out of Europe on Oct. 31 with no deal at all — a scenario that experts have warned would lead to chaos at the border, economic hardship for many and civil unrest in Northern Ireland and possibly elsewhere.
The British pound soared on the news of a deal to a five-month high, trading at $1.29 to the dollar, then it slumped as word of the Democratic Unionist Party’s opposition to the agreement spread. At about 1 p.m., the pound was worth $1.27. Alternatively, if he is defeated in a Parliament vote expected on Saturday, Mr. Johnson is likely to renew his call for a general election, arguing that he did everything he could to leave by Oct. 31 and that should the voters back him.
The Democratic Unionists, who have proved to be a pivotal blocking force in previous attempts to negotiate a Brexit agreement, said they were troubled by elements of the deal on how to handle Northern Ireland in a post-Brexit world. There are other scenarios, including a second referendum on Britain’s European Union membership, which was gaining support this week, and a Conservative election flop that could topple Mr. Johnson and possibly hand control to Mr. Corbyn, the Labour leader.
“As things stand, we could not support what is being suggested on a customs and consent issues, and there is a lack of clarity on VAT,” the party said in a statement issued earlier on Thursday, referring to the value-added tax. But nobody really knows how things will pan out. “We have one step forward, in that we’re talking about something substantive,” said Sam Lowe, a senior research fellow at the Center for European Reform, a research group in London. “But we still really have no idea where this is all going to land.”
The party said it would continue working with the government on an acceptable agreement. Under the terms of the agreement, Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom, would leave the European Union’s single market and join a separate customs union with Britain. But it would remain closely aligned with a maze of European rules and regulations, which would allow seamless trading to continue with Ireland, a member of the European Union.
Mr. Johnson has consulted closely with the Democratic Unionists and other skeptical elements of his Conservative Party-led coalition as a deal has taken shape. On Wednesday, optimism had grown amid signs in Brussels that the deadlock over Britain’s planned departure from the bloc could be on the verge of breaking. The deal that Mr. Johnson struck is not radically different from a proposal Europe first made to Britain in early 2018, although that deal would have kept Northern Ireland legally part of the European customs union. Mr. Johnson’s predecessor, Theresa May, rejected that proposal, saying that it threatened the territorial integrity of the United Kingdom and that “no U.K. prime minister could ever agree to it.”
Brussels has pushed Mr. Johnson so far that it “makes sense they are unhappy,” Mujtaba Rahman, an analyst with the Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy, said of the Democratic Unionists. But he said it was unclear how serious the setback was, because “the D.U.P. does have to be seen fighting.” At the time, Mrs. May was hemmed in by the Democratic Unionists, who propped up her Conservative-led minority government and exerted a strong influence over the hard-line, pro-Brexit faction of the Conservative Party. The party rejected any deal that distinguished Northern Ireland from the rest of the United Kingdom, which it saw as a first step toward Irish unification.
The intervention from the Democratic Unionists underscored the problems that Mr. Johnson faces in trying to get any deal through Parliament, where he does not have a majority. Without the support of the D.U.P., Mr. Johnson has little hope of getting any agreement ratified by Parliament. Mr. Johnson, an outspoken proponent of leaving the European Union, somewhat diluted that influence, having earned the trust of hard-liners in his party. Yet, in the process of building that trust, he vowed to leave Europe by Oct. 31, even without a deal. That set off a rebellion in his own party and a vote by Parliament to force him to ask for an extension if he did not produce a deal.
It is also a reminder that he faces many of the problems confronted by Mrs. May. In December 2017, the Democratic Unionists derailed her efforts to reach a deal to allow her to proceed to another phase in the Brexit negotiations. Facing that prospect, Mr. Johnson proved to be an energetic negotiator, willing to make compromises where necessary. Britain moved closer to Europe’s insistence that there be no hard Irish border, offering a flurry of proposals about how to allow near-frictionless trade between two jurisdictions.
That happened while she was holding a working lunch with Mr. Juncker. She was forced to pause discussions with the European Commission president, and keep diplomats waiting, to take a call from Arlene Foster, the Democratic Unionist Party’s leader. But Mr. Johnson insisted that Northern Ireland remain legally part of a British customs union, which he viewed as critical to keeping the support of the D.U.P. As his envoys haggled over terms in Brussels, Mr. Johnson met with a parade of unionists and other skeptics.
Mrs. May then returned with a revised plan several days later, at which point Ms. Foster said that the new version ensured that there would be no border between Britain and Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom. Hopes for a deal surged early this week, in part because there was little public dissent from the Democratic Unionists. A hard-line Brexit group in the Conservative Party, the European Research Group, voiced cautious support for Mr. Johnson’s plan. But as the language in the draft text became public, the Democratic Unionists quickly broke with Mr. Johnson.
Essentially, Mr. Johnson’s proposed agreement would leave Northern Ireland aligned with European Union laws and regulations on most trade issues, even as it moved out of the European single market and into a customs union with Britain. “As things stand, we could not support what is being suggested on customs and consent issues, and there is a lack of clarity on VAT,” the party’s leaders said on Thursday in a statement, referring to the value-added tax.
Under the proposed terms, there would be customs checks on goods flowing from Britain to Northern Ireland to ensure that they meet the rules if those goods were ultimately destined for the European Union. It followed that up with another, stronger statement, claiming the draft agreement “drives a coach and horses through the professed sanctity” of the Good Friday peace accord and would hurt the region’s and undermine the integrity of the United Kingdom.
There would be a complex series of rules on tariffs and value-added tax payments to compensate for differences in tariff rates between the European and British customs unions, though negotiators had struggled on Tuesday to resolve the issue of how to rebate value-added tax payments. With approval from the European Union reasonably sure, the attention was thus shifting to the British Parliament, which is expected to vote on the deal on Saturday.
The arrangement would also be subject to consent by the Northern Ireland Assembly, but in a way that would prevent the Democratic Unionists, who have opposed previous such proposals, from simply vetoing it at the first possible opportunity. Mr. Lowe said that Mr. Johnson faced a difficult, but not impossible, task in getting his plan through, and that he could even gain by losing. “I think he could lose, in which case this will all be about positioning himself for a general election,” Mr. Lowe said. of the prime minister.
The Democratic Unionists are crucial to Mr. Johnson’s effort to win a majority for the deal in Parliament. Their opposition to similar previous versions of a Brexit agreement forced Mrs. May to overhaul that agreement to place all of Britain in the European customs union for a period of time. Without the support of the Democratic Unionist Party, Mr. Johnson will struggle to secure Parliament’s approval. The last time Mrs. May put her proposal to lawmakers, she lost by 58 votes.
Mrs. May’s deal was, nevertheless, soundly defeated in Parliament three times. That was a different deal, and many of the hard-line Brexit supporters who rebelled prefer Mr. Johnson’s blueprint. They also trust Mr. Johnson more to steer the next phase of negotiations, focusing on a trade deal, and to secure much looser ties to the bloc.
Mr. Johnson was seen as having a better chance of cobbling together a majority, in part because he was a vocal supporter of Brexit before the 2016 referendum and thus has greater credibility with euroskeptic elements of the Conservative coalition. Mr. Johnson will also try to persuade Labour lawmakers who represent areas that voted in 2016 to leave the European Union to defy their party and support his plan.
The Democratic Unionist Party campaigned for Brexit in the 2016 referendum campaign, and Mr. Johnson has presented his plan as the last chance to deliver on that mandate from voters. In Northern Ireland as a whole, however, 56 percent of voters in the referendum favored remaining in the European Union. But he might still fall short without the D.U.P. Ominously for the prime minister, the leader of the hard-line European Research Group, Steve Baker, said on Thursday that he did not see how it could support the deal if Mr. Johnson failed to secure the backing of the Democratic Unionists.
Yet, for the party, which is strongly committed to maintaining Northern Ireland’s status as a part of the United Kingdom, the issues being negotiated by Mr. Johnson are existential. That is because if they bind Northern Ireland much more closely to Ireland, its southern neighbor, some fear that it would inevitably lead to a united Ireland. Mr. Johnson’s situation would be strengthened if European Union leaders made it clear that they would not agree to a further delay if Parliament rejects this plan. That would effectively force lawmakers to choose among the new blueprint, a potentially disastrous rupture without a deal or a complete revocation of Brexit.
If the Democratic Unionists have collectively decided that the proposals are unacceptable, they will have to change to secure support. But that would be a big step for European leaders, who have so far been anxious to avoid giving any impression that they are pushing the British out of the bloc.
Mr. Johnson has vowed to withdraw Britain from the European Union, with or without a deal, by Oct. 31, and his negotiators have labored to seal an agreement by this week so that he is not forced to ask Brussels for an extension, as would be required under a measure that Parliament passed last month. Matina Stevis-Gridneff contributed reporting from Brussels, and Anna Schaverien from London.
Anna Schaverien contributed reporting from London.