“We should offer to pay for all the costs of a new border. It has the best chance of succeeding.”
Despite the fact that Boris Johnson was a no-show, the candidates to become the next leader of the Conservative party gathered for a televised debate on Channel 4 on Sunday evening, where they clashed over various Brexit strategies and their plans to lead the UK.
The 90-minute debate featured five candidates (Jeremy Hunt, Dominic Raab, Rory Stewart, Michael Gove and Sajid Javid) mainly debate over the issue of Brexit. Four of them said that they would seek to renegotiate the draft Brexit deal that has been agreed with Brussels, even though EU leaders have repeatedly ruled this out.
In terms of the border dispute and the backstop, Sajid Javid has been quite vocal about the issue in the recent past.
In a previous interview, the UK’s Home Secretary said that Britain should pay the Irish government half a billion pounds to break the Brexit deadlock over the border issue.and that it it will take “hundreds of millions of euros, no one really knows because it hasn’t been done before”.
Mr Javid wants the money to be used to set up new technology-driven border checks to avoid keeping the “UK locked to EU rules”.
He added: “I think it’s morally justified to pay for that because we both have signed the Good Friday Agreement, we are both absolutely committed to peace on the island of Ireland and – given that we voted to leave and that’s what’s changing the status quo on the island of Ireland – I think it’s morally right that we say, ‘look, we’ll pay because we’ve caused this’.”
During the most recent debate, host Krishnan Guru-Murthy asked the panelists, if they’re elected leader of the Conservative party, if they could get UK government to successfully renegotiate the Withdrawal Agreement?
International Development Secretary Rory Stewart said the idea that anyone will get a new deal from Brussels is nonsense and pure machismo.
At this point, Mr Javid was asked to give his views and he said: “The only thing that’s realistic and credible in terms of getting a deal is to focus on the one thing that has got through Parliament already. That is the Withdrawal Agreement with a change to the backstop. That’s it.
“Of course it requires a change, but you go to Ireland – Ireland is the key decision maker in this – you’ve got to change something and I’ve said that we should offer to pay for all the costs of a new border, the so called alternative arrangements.
“That will change the mood music and it has the best chance of succeeding. All the other ideas that we’re hearing about, they are pie in the sky. They’re not going to to work.”
Again, in 2018, a House of Commons committee said it had not seen any technical solutions anywhere in the world that would remove the need for physical infrastructure at the border.
The committee stated it “had no visibility of any technical solutions, anywhere in the world, beyond the aspirational, that would remove the need for physical infrastructure at the border”.
A few months ago, it was reported that the possibility of a technological solution to the border issue could be more than a decade away, according to a Home Office document.
You can hear Javid’s comments at the 23:00 mark in the video below.
Clip via Channel 4 News
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