Britain set to reject alignment with EU

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he won't accept any alignment with European Union rules when negotiating a trade deal with Brussels, following Britain's official withdrawal from the EU on Friday.

Johnson on Monday toughened his post-Brexit stance ahead of trade talks, after reports suggested EU chiefs want the United Kingdom to continue to follow Brussels-made rules.

There now begins an 11-month transition period, during which the government must secure a future trading and security relationship with the EU to avoid a no-deal Brexit.

Johnson stressed that the choice was either a Canada or Australia-style accord.

"There is no need for a free trade agreement to involve accepting EU rules on competition policy, subsidies, social protection, the environment or anything similar, any more than the EU should be obliged to accept UK rules," Johnson said in a speech in London.

"Are we going to insist that the EU does everything that we do as the price of free trade? Are we? Of course not," he said.

"We want a comprehensive free trade agreement similar to Canada's but in the unlikely event that we do not succeed then our trade will have to be based on our existing withdrawal agreement with the EU."

The EU is seeking alignment on standards and state subsidies, and wants the UK to accept the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice, over matters relating to any trade deal.

A Canada-style free-trade deal would allow tariff-free trade for the majority of goods, but would not include Britain's dominant services sector.

British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab on Sunday told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show that agreeing to align strongly with EU rules would "defeat the point of Brexit".

Asked about reports of EU demands for the European Court of Justice to oversee disputes in any trade deal with the UK, Raab said: "We all agreed that we weren't going to do that.

"We want to have a good positive win-win new deal with the EU.That's not going to happen if they pull the rug, shift the goalposts."

But Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar told the BBC that the UK needed to commit to a level playing field to get a free-trade deal.

Labour's shadow chancellor of the exchequer John McDonnell said by seeking to move away from EU rules, Johnson was contradicting promises he made to protect standards on the environment, workers' rights, and consumer protections.