Video showing Boris Johnson’s hypocrisy over Brexit plan projected on to Parliament

Led by Donkeys have projected a clip from Boris Johnson's 2018 speech to the DUP onto the Houses of Parliament. Picture: Led By Donkeys - Credit: Led By Donkeys

As Boris Johnson attempts to get a draft Withdrawal Agreement past his own MPs, pranksters have projected a reminder of the time he advised them that ‘no British Conservative government’ should accept similar terms.

Hey @BorisJohnson, we saw you gave a speech to DUP conference last year excoriating the very deal you're now trying to strike with the EU. Given the astronomical level of hypocrisy on show here, we projected it onto the side of Parliament last night. SOUND ON. pic.twitter.com/zBIkWDFHMU
— Led By Donkeys (@ByDonkeys) October 17, 2019

The latest stunt by Led By Donkeys has unearthed a clip of Johnson at the DUP conference in November 2018 in which he urged the party to resist the Northern Irish backstop.

“If we genuinely wanted to do free trade deals, if we wanted to cut tariffs, if we wanted to vary our regulation, then we would have to leave Northern Ireland behind as an economic semi-colony of the EU,” he said.

“And we would be damaging the fabric of the Union with regulatory checks and even customs controls between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, on top of those extra regulatory checks down the Irish Sea that are already envisaged in the Withdrawal Agreement.

“Now I have to tell you, no British Conservative government could or should sign up to any such arrangement.”

The trouble for Johnson at this stage is that his own solution to the issue of the Northern Irish backstop, taking shape in a deal being hammered out in Brussels, also involves Northern Ireland staying in the EU’s tariff scheme in practice, with regulatory and customs checks in the Irish Sea.