She’s Back! Theresa May Comes Out Against Boris’s Brexit Bill

LONDON, ENGLAND - JULY 19: Britain's Prime Minister, Theresa May, leaves for the weekly Pr
Carl Court/Getty Images

Former Prime Minister Theresa May announced that she will not vote for Boris Johnson’s Brexit bill that would amend Britain’s Withdrawal Agreement (WA) with the EU, claiming it will cause “untold damage” to the UK.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has argued that the WA as it stands would allow the European Union to “carve up the country” and threaten the integrity of the Good Friday Peace agreement by implementing artificial barriers between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom.

The European Union has argued that the proposed Internal Market Bill would break international law, but the government has said that it is critical that Northern Ireland retain unfettered access to the rest of the country.

The Bill would also allow Britain to scrap onerous restrictions on state aid, which has become increasingly critical in the view of the government during the economic downturn as a result of the China virus.

Theresa May — who retained her position as a Member of Parliament after resigning as prime minister last year — denounced the government’s Brexit strategy and pronounced that she will not vote for the bill.

“I cannot emphasise how concerned I am that a Conservative government is willing to go back on its word, to break an international agreement signed in good faith and to break international law,” she said.

“Frankly, my view is to the outside world it makes no difference as to whether a decision to break international law is taken by a minister or by this Parliament – it is still a decision to break international law,” she went on.

The former prime minister claimed that the move “can only weaken the UK in the eyes of the world”, and that if Parliament passes the Internal Market Bill then “our reputation as a country that sticks by its word will have been tarnished”.

In taking aim at the government’s Brexit strategy, Mrs May joins the likes of other globalist politicians including Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden and the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who have warned that should Biden win in November then the U.S. will punish the UK in trade talks for supposedly breaching international law.

She also earned praise from left-wing MPs, such as Rupa Huq who said: “I’ve disagreed with the vast majority of what Theresa May has done politically but every word of her stinging attack on Internal Market Bill for its lawbreaking and UK-reputation-destroying rings true.”

Mrs May, who was an opponent of the pro-sovereignty Brexit movement, was largely seen as a “failure” during her tenure as prime minister. She tearfully resigned last year, after the House of Commons rejected three of her proposed withdrawal agreements.

As prime minister, May also delayed Brexit twice after promising 108 times that the UK would leave the EU on March 29th of 2019.

Last year, the former prime minister was accused of lying to the British public after the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator revealed that May — despite public claims to the contrary — never told the bloc that Britain would leave without a trade deal, a key element of her successor Boris Johnson’s negotiating strategy.

It is doubtful that Mrs May’s quixotic attempts to derail Brexit again will have any impact, as Boris Johnson has reportedly reached a compromise with a group of Tory rebels that will give MPs a chance to vote on the measures within the Internal Market Bill before they are implemented.

One of the leaders of the minor rebellion, Sir Bob Neill, said that his group is now willing to support the bill, following the compromise.

“It does enable some of us who otherwise would not have been able to support these clauses to enable them to proceed on the understanding that there is a specific parliamentary lock that the bad faith on the counter-party’s side must be proven to the House before these matters were actually brought into operation, which of course all of us hope would never be the case,” he said.

Follow Kurt on Twitter at @KurtZindulka

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