Theresa May: My Brexit would have been better than Johnson’s ‘bad deal’
Theresa May has said her Brexit deal would have been better for the UK than the one struck by her successor Boris Johnson.
The former Tory leader, who attempted to secure the UK’s exit from the EU via the Chequers deal before being forced to resign, told LBC Johnson’s version was “a bad deal”.
Speaking to presenter Andrew Marr she criticised Johnson for accepting “what the EU had actually proposed in the first place” leading to the creation of a “border down the Irish Sea”.
“Did he recognise the impact this would have on Northern Ireland? Or was he just so keen to get a deal and be able to claim victory he just accepted it? It was a bad deal,” May said.
Meanwhile, the former Conservative prime minister praised Rishi Sunak’s Windsor Framework which she said has “eased that situation, and in many ways, resolves those issues”.
Her comments come as the government makes moves towards a somewhat closer relationship with Europe, from rejoining the science funding scheme, Horizon, to a report in Bloomberg of a preliminary agreement being reached to rejoin EU border agency Frontex.
May became Prime Minister in 2016 after the 52:48 EU referendum result, but was opposed by both Brexiteers and Remainers during her attempts to find a compromise between the two camps.
In a separate interview on Wednesday, as part of a tour to publicise her new book The Abuse of Power, she told the BBC’s Nick Robinson on the Political Thinking podcast that she wanted “to deliver a Brexit that recognised the concerns of the 48%.. and that was the deal I believe I negotiated.”
“It wouldn’t have given either side 100 per cent of what they wanted, but it would have given the country a better overall deal,” May added.
“I was trying to get people beyond that sense of only looking at what the past had been like.”
The Abuse of Power explores injustices including deaths at Hillsborough, the Grenfell fire, child sex abuse in Rotherham, and bullying in Westminster.