And she has also suggested the full negative implications of the agreement, which she said would leave the UK subject to EU law “in perpetuity”, would not be felt for several years DUP MPs today dug their heels in over their objections to Mr Johnson’s plan, vowing to push for a general election in a bid to help secure “more robust” divorce terms.
Michael Gove, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Boris Johnson’s Brexit “fixer”, was forced to deny his party had “thrown the DUP under the bus” during an interview with Sky News yesterday.
However, Miss Widdecombe, herself a former Conservative Party MP, believed the Tories had done precisely that.
She told Express.co.uk: “I think that Boris Johnson began by saying no border down the Irish Sea.
However, she suggested it would take between two and three years for the shortcomings to become apparent to the public at large.
She explained: “Suddenly they hear politicians saying ‘well we have to do this because it’s EU law and they think ‘Well hang on a minute, didn’t we leave?’
“And that is when it will start to sink in.
“The analogy I’ve been using is Gordon Brown’s raid on pensions. In 1998 we saw that it was going to happen, and that it was going to wreck pension schemes.
“Nobody took any notice because they’d just thrown us out after four terms.
“They refused to take any notice and then years down the line when it became obvious that pension schemes were not functioning as they should be, everybody said they didn’t understand and I said: ‘No, you wouldn’t listen.
“And this is what’s happening now.”
Miss Widdecombe will be speaking at a Brexit Party rally tonight alongside leader Nigel Farage on the eve of tomorrow’s crunch vote in the House of Commons.
She said: “I shall be urging a clean break, we have not got the decision until tomorrow.
“I shall be saying this deal ties us to the supremacy of EU law and that was the one thing we thought we were escaping.
“A clean break is still the best option and I shall say that right up until the moment when we do or don’t get one.”
