Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson has launched a scathing attack on Labour's EU reset deal, describing it as a "very, very bad" agreement that represents a "complete and deliberate betrayal of Brexit".
In an exclusive interview with GB News, Johnson accused Sir Keir Starmer of dishonesty and claimed the Prime Minister is turning the UK into the EU's "gimp".
Johnson also denied accusations that the previous Conservative government had sold out the fishing industry, explaining: "What we did was we came up with a transitional plan, and this was very hard fought. And step by step, we were taking back control of our fisheries."
He insisted that under his government's plan, "from January next year, every halibut, every cod, every mackerel in our waters, was going to revert completely to UK control".
Boris Johnson has defended the fisheries deal secured by the Conservatives following Labour's latest agreement with the EU
GB News
The former Conservative leader did not hold back in his criticism, stating he doesn't want to see the country become "the punk of Brussels". He claimed that Starmer is now "taking us back into the sweaty embrace of Brussels".
Johnson specifically accused the Prime Minister of making the UK a "rule-taker" under the new deal, claiming that "for a huge range of issues, on food standards, hygiene and many other things, areas where we want to do things differently, to take advantage of new technologies, we're going to be taking rules from Brussels".
He further alleged that these rules would be "under the control of the European Court of Justice, with no ability for our parliament, our government, to vary those rules".
The former PM was particularly critical of the fisheries aspect of the agreement, describing it as a "total sell-out on our fisheries" and suggesting Starmer had "thrown away that massive negotiating advantage for absolutely nothing in return".
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Sir Keir Starmer unveiled his new deal at Lancaster HouseGETTYWhen challenged by GB News Home and Security Editor Mark White that the previous fisheries deal was weak, Johnson responded: "No, that's rubbish. I don't know who these critics are, but they're talking total rubbish."
He claimed "the remain establishment who never cared about the UK fishing industry have collaborated with the European Union" to "abandon the gains that we had won and to throw away our rights to our fish at the very moment when we're about to take back full control."
Johnson criticised the regulatory checks under the deal, arguing they show "how completely pointless and vexatious those regulatory checks really were".
He claimed the agreement still doesn't guarantee "unfettered, frictionless movement across the Irish Sea" for products like hamburgers or bacon sandwiches going from Great Britain to Northern Ireland.
Boris Johnson said the deal was a 'disgrace'
GB News
"What we should have done is stuck with the UK internal market measures that we had, the protocol bill that we brought forward shortly before I was sadly obliged to leave office," Johnson said.
He argued that the UK is now "being tied closer and closer to the European single market, unable to deviate, unable to do things differently, which we've got to do in a competitive global economy because of the risk of diverging from Northern Ireland".
Johnson insisted this approach is "totally wrong" and that "the UK should be able to do exactly what it needs to do".
"Look at what is really happening in the world economy. Compare the growth rates of the European Union and the United States of America or other developed economies where they have a more liberal a more free market, a less regulated, less high tax approach, that's where the growth is," he told GB News.
He concluded that the reset deal was "totally the wrong thing for us to do" in terms of the UK's ability to compete in the global economy.
