Theresa May has criticised Boris Johnson for striking a “bad deal” over Brexit, and suggested her successor abused his power during his time in No 10.
In a rare public interview ahead of the publication of her forthcoming book, the former prime minister said Mr Johnson’s Brexit deal had made it “difficult for people” in Northern Ireland.
“It was a bad deal, I think as we saw from all the problems we had on the Northern Ireland Protocol,” she told LBC.
“And Rishi Sunak came in and of course agreed the Windsor Framework, which has eased that situation and in many ways resolves those issues.
“But we had that period of time when it was really very difficult for Northern Ireland and difficult for people, supermarkets and so forth… all the checks and stuff that came as a result of Boris Johnson’s deal.”
Mrs May said her Brexit deal, which failed to gain Parliament’s support and prompted her resignation as prime minister, would have been “better” than Mr Johnson’s, which included a sea border down the Irish sea between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
She claimed her plan contained some of the benefits of the European Union’s single market but was blocked in the Commons by “hardline” Brexiteers and Remainers.
The Tory backbencher also took a swipe at Mr Johnson for having “accepted what the EU had actually proposed in the first place, and then claimed it was a great victory”.
“And on the back of that, of course, he was able to say he’d done Brexit,” she added.
Speaking to the BBC later about her new book, Abuse of Power: Confronting Injustice in Public Life, the former prime minister also criticised Mr Johnson over the Partygate scandal, suggesting it undermined public trust in politicians.
She said the implication that there was one rule for the public and one rule for the politicians during the Covid crisis was “damaging” for the Government.
Asked by the BBC’s Nick Robinson whether a passage in her book about politicians using power to protect themselves referred to figures such as Mr Johnson, Mrs May said: “The examples in the book that I give of institutions and individuals in various ways exemplifies that sense of defending their institution rather than doing the job of protecting those that they were there to serve.”
The former prime minister was a vocal critic of the Partygate scandal in the House of Commons, and urged Tory MPs to vote in favour of the Privileges Committee’s damning report earlier this year that found Mr Johnson lied to Parliament over the saga.
Mrs May said it was “doubly important” for the Conservatives to vote through the findings of the report in order to show that “we are prepared to act when one of our own, however senior, is found wanting”.
Her comment were taken as a veiled attack at Rishi Sunak, who chose to skip the vote on the Privileges Committee’s report, claiming that he had too many “commitments” in his diary to attend.
While Mrs May refused to criticise Mr Sunak while speaking to the BBC’s Political Thinking podcast, she said the Government must go “full throttle” at its target to become net zero by 2050.
However, she voiced her support for Mr Sunak’s recent emphasis on cost of living concerns in his approach to cutting carbon emissions, saying that “we have to take people along with us”.
“If we shake our fingers at people and say you can never fly again, you can never drive a car again, you can never eat meat again, we’re never going to get where we need to be because people are just going to say, ‘No, hang on a minute, no, that’s not me,'” she said.
“As Rishi says, he wants it to be about jobs. He wants it to be about economic growth. I think it really can be. And I want to see the government coming full throttle behind that.”
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