Former UK Independence Party MEP Nigel Farage on Friday weighed in former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s vulgar “f*** the Americans” outburst last month in comments to The Independent linking the ex-PM’s incendiary remarks to the Biden administration stance on Northern Ireland.
In a brief interview on the sidelines of the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland, Mr Farage admitted that such a remark would be typical of Mr Johnson and slammed the current US government for not taking sides in the dispute between the UK and EU.
“He may well have said that, but that’s just Boris being Boris,” he said, adding that the Biden administration — which has held off on negotiating a bilateral trade agreement with the UK while the Northern Ireland issue remained unresolved — “hasn’t exactly been friendly to the UK”.
Mr Farage also said the recently announced Northern Ireland customs deal between the UK and European Union has been oversold by British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
“He's tried to say it means we've got we've got the freedom over VAT and all goods between the mainland and Northern Ireland can now can now go without checks, and it's just not true,” he said.
The ex-Brexit Party leader turned GB News anchor conceded that the deal results in “fewer” checks of goods moving between Northern Ireland and Great Britain, and he noted that it is now possible to “now sell sausages from one part of the United Kingdom to another” while mocking the idea that the intra-market sausage trade is something to be celebrated.
He added that under the agreement, Northern Ireland will remain “still to a very large degree under the European Court of Justice, under European law”.
“I think ... the initial joy with which it was met is unraveling as we begin to learn more detail,” he said.
Asked how he’d resolve Northern Ireland’s status and relationship with the EU single market — a relationship that is necessary to avoid a hard border on the island and preserve the Good Friday accords — he suggested establishing a bespoke tribunal to settle trade disputes between the UK and EU over Northern Ireland goods.
“I do understand that I'm trade that needs to be some kind of compromise because of the complexity of that. border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland — each has a different political union, different currency, all of those things. That's fine,” he said. “And I don't mind if we have to have a court, a dispute mechanism, but it cannot be the European Court of Justice because that is the embodiment of the power of the EU”.
“I accept Northern Ireland's very complicated — Ireland's always been complicated. I'm all for compromise, but you can't compromise if you if you accept that a foreign court has jurisdiction over your party or country,” he added.
