Britain's proposal for a customs partnership with the European Union after Brexit is "crazy", foreign minister Boris Johnson said, deepening divisions that are challenging Prime Minister Theresa May. Johnson, in Washington to try to win over US President Donald Trump to the Iran nuclear deal, spoke to the Daily Mail newspaper to add his voice to an increasingly bad-tempered debate over Britain's future customs arrangements. After business minister Greg Clark again made the case for the customs partnership, which would effectively see Britain collect tariffs for the EU, Johnson responded by saying it was a "crazy system". "It's totally untried and would make it very, very difficult to do free trade deals," Johnson said in an interview published in Tuesday's Daily Mail. "If you have the new customs partnership, you have a crazy system whereby you end up collecting the tariffs on behalf of the EU at the UK frontier."

Source: dna May 08, 2018 09:33 UTC