Boris Johnson: Brexit trade deal offers best chance of beating pandemic

The Prime Minister will also say that the UK intends to be “a friendly neighbour” as MPs prepare to endorse his post-Brexit trade deal in a historic vote.

Mr Johnson is assured of success in the first post-Christmas sitting of Parliament since the war after the 1,246-page text was backed by the European Research Group of MPs who say it “preserves the UK’s sovereignty” in their view, including future fisheries policy.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has also promised his backing in the “national interest” in spite of a rebellion from some members.

Meanwhile Haltemprice and Howden MP David Davis, a former Brexit Secretary, believes MPs need “more than one day” to study the implications for trade because complex treaties often generate outcomes “not always foreseen”.

But Mr Johnson appears determined to a draw a line under years of Brexit acrimony and focus on the UK’s economic recovery – the Covid crisis means most MPs will take part in the debate and vote remotely as London is under Tier 4 restrictions.

Setting out the EU (Future Relationship) Bill, the PM is expected to say that the landmark law demonstrates “how Britain can be at once European and sovereign” from New Year’s Eve.

“We have done this in less than a year, in the teeth of a pandemic, and we have pressed ahead with this task, resisting all calls for delay, precisely because creating certainty about our future provides the best chance of beating Covid and bouncing back even more strongly next year,” he will also tell Parliament.

Mr Johnson will also promise more harmonious relations with Europe while citing the benefits of Britain’s post-Brexit trade deals with the rest of the world – the latest being with Turkey.

“We will now open a new chapter in our national story, striking free trade deals around the world, adding to the agreements with 63 countries we have already achieved, and reasserting Global Britain as a liberal, outward-looking force for good,” he will conclude.

“Those of us who campaigned for Britain to leave the EU never sought a rupture with our closest neighbours...What we sought was not a rupture but a resolution, a resolution of the old and vexed question of Britain’s political relations with Europe, which bedevilled our post-war history.

“First we stood aloof, then we became a half-hearted, sometimes obstructive member of the EU. Now, with this Bill, we shall be a friendly neighbour – the best friend and ally the EU could have – while fulfilling the sovereign wish of the British people to live under their own laws, made by their own elected Parliament.”

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Reassurance for fishing fleets

britain WILL be able to regain control of its fisheries, a key group of Tory MPs has concluded.

The European Research Group of leading Eurosceptics convened a so-called ‘star chamber’ of lawyers to study the EU trade deal.

They state that it “temporarily limits the exercise of the UK’s sovereign rights over its waters that would apply in the absence of the Agreement”.

However, they said that at the end of the fishing transition period the UK “will have the legal right to take full control of its waters” and the “question of practical sovereignty” is “dependent on the preparedness” of the UK Government’s response at that future point in time.

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