UK ‘cannot accept current agreement’ on Brexit: Johnson

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday that the UK “cannot accept” the current terms of their Brexit deal to leave the European Union.

“Clearly we cannot accept the current withdrawal agreement, arrangements which either divide the UK or lock us into the regulatory and trading arrangements of the EU… without the UK having any say on those matters,” he said in Berlin.

Johnson is seeking to convince Merkel, and then French President Emmanuel Macron whom he visits Thursday, to renegotiate elements of the UK’s impending divorce from the bloc, including the so-called Ireland backstop plan — something the EU leaders had already ruled out.

“So we need that backstop removed, but if we can do that I am absolutely sure we can move forward together,” Johnson told reporters.