Boris Johnson’s withering attacks on Theresa May’s Brexit deal

Leading Brexit supporter Boris Johnson has declared he has taken the “painful” decision to vote for Prime Minister Theresa May’s EU Withdrawal Agreement.

He is one of a number of prominent rebels who have set aside their previous opposition to the deal, including Jacob Rees-Mogg, Iain Duncan Smith and Dominic Raab.

Mr Raab confirmed on Friday that he will back the deal, despite having said the previous day that the UK should press for changes to the Irish backstop and be prepared to leave without a deal.

Former foreign secretary Mr Johnson has been a vocal critic of Mrs May’s deal – here are some of his previous attacks on the plans:

2019

March 26 – Mr Johnson compared the UK’s efforts to leave the EU to the biblical struggle between Moses and Egypt’s pharaoh and urged the country “to channel the spirit of Moses and Aaron in Exodus and say to the pharaohs of Brussels ‘Let my people go'”.

March 24 – In his Daily Telegraph column, he branded the deal “rotten” and added: “There is only one plausible argument why we should now vote it through – and that is that every other option is now worse.”

March 17 – Mr Johnson wrote that the deal was “detrimental to the country”.

March 10 – He said the Withdrawal Agreement would make the EU “our colonial masters”.

February 3 – Mr Johnson said the Withdrawal Agreement was an “appalling deal” that would leave the UK in “servitude” until 2020.

January 20 – He said the deal had been “kicked into orbit” after it was rejected in the House of Commons. He added: “It will never get through Parliament because it is fundamentally anti-democratic.”

January 13 – Mr Johnson branded the deal a “complete stinker”, the “worst of both worlds” and had “appalling defects”.

2018

December 2 – Mr Johnson described the backstop as a “great steel trap that is about to clamp its jaws around our hind limbs and prevent our escape” and an “instrument of blackmail” to keep the UK as “effective captives of the EU”.

November 25 – He said the deal was a “disaster for the country”.

November 18 – He said if MPs voted for the deal “we are bowing our neck to the yoke”, and added: “We are preparing to take colonial rule by foreign powers and courts.”

November 12 – Mr Johnson said the terms of the deal were such that “might be enforced on a colony” and warned: “On the present plans we will be a vassal state.”

September 27 – He described the Chequers proposals as “disastrous” and said: “Such enforced vassalage should be unacceptable to any democratic country.”

September 8 – Mr Johnson said the Chequers plan had “wrapped a suicide vest” around the British constitution and “handed the detonator” to Brussels.

September 3 – He said that by adopting the Chequers proposals the UK had gone “into battle with the white flag fluttering over our leading tank”.