Angela Merkel gives Boris Johnson 30 days to solve Irish backstop problem

Boris Johnson has insisted a Brexit deal with the European Union is still possible, as long as the Irish backstop is scrapped.

But Angela Merkel has challenged him a 30 day ultimatum to come up with an alternative solution.

The German Chancellor has told Johnson the European Union is bracing itself for a no-deal Brexit on October 31 if the standoff is not resolved.

She called the UK Prime Minister’s bluff as the welcomed him to Berlin today on his first foreign trip as leader.

Merkel said she wanted to maintain ‘very close relations’ with the UK after Brexit but acknowledged that a new deal might not be forged.

It comes after Johnson wrote a letter to European Council President Donald Tusk insisting the backstop is ‘anti-democratic and inconsistent with the sovereignty of the UK.’

He argues the backstop, a contingency plan to prevent a hard border with the Republic of Ireland, would mean Northern Ireland would be treated differently to the rest of the UK as it would be forced to follow EU regulations.

After a reception in the German capital, Ms Merkel put the responsibility of finding an alternative arrangement on the UK.

She said: ‘If one is able to solve this conundrum, if one finds this solution, we said we would probably find it in the next two years to come but we can also maybe find it in the next 30 days to come.

‘Then we are one step further in the right direction and we have to obviously put our all into this.’

Johnson, whose opposition to the backstop has been met with a wall of resistance in Brussels, insisted he wanted a Brexit deal.

He added: ‘Clearly we cannot accept the current Withdrawal Agreement, arrangements that either divide the UK or lock us into the regulatory and trading arrangements of the EU, the legal order of the EU, without the UK having any say on those matters.

‘So we do need that backstop removed.

‘But if we can do that then I am absolutely certain that we can move forward together.’

Johnson conceded that ‘the onus is on us’ to come up with a solution and he is ‘more than happy’ with the German leader’s ‘blistering timetable of 30 days’ to come up with the answers.

He added: ‘I think what we need to do is remove it whole and entire – the backstop – and then work, as Chancellor Merkel says, on the alternative arrangements.

‘There are abundant solutions which are proffered, which have already been discussed. I don’t think, to be fair, they have so far been very actively proposed over the last three years by the British Government.’

He suggested a range of alternative arrangements that could help address concerns of maintaining frictionless trade at the Northern Irish border, including trusted trader schemes or electronic pre-clearing.

Mr Merkel acknowledged the importance of preserving, ‘in letter and ‘spirit’, the Good Friday Agreement, forged in the 1990s to stop bloodshed between Irish republicans and loyalists.

In his letter to Tusk, Johnson argued the ‘carefully negotiated balance’ risked being compromised by the backstop.