David Lidington Quotes

No-one wants to see a return to the hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland.

A Canada-style deal for the whole of the UK results in a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. For that reason, it has never been acceptable to the EU without a permanent hard border down the Irish Sea.

I think that what is happening now in terms of the Brexit vote does represent a serious undermining of the Good Friday Agreement.

The pursuit of an extreme Brexit cannot come at the cost of peace in Northern Ireland.

There will be no hard border from Dundalk to Derry in the context of it being a European border, and by that I mean customs posts every mile along the road.

If the U.K. had new watertight proposals for the border, I don't think anyone in the E.U. would say, 'We don't want to talk about it.'

We have to show the E.U. and show Ireland that our commitment to the Belfast Good Friday agreement is absolutely unconditional.

The negotiations on the future of the U.K. and the E.U. must be led... in the interest of our citizens.

We would only need a bespoke solution for Northern Ireland if Britain leaves the Single Market.

The Tories must stop focusing on their ideological obsession with a hard Brexit and their internal party divisions and start focusing on what is best for our country and our economy. Their absurd proposal that the U.K. should become the E.U.'s tariff collector is neither practical nor palatable across the Channel.

I cannot conceive of circumstances where Labour MPs are marshalled to go through the lobby to vote against us staying in the single market and customs union with the likes of Jacob Rees Mogg, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove.

I hope the unionist parties, for example, who would be keen to protect and preserve the Union would see that it's much easier to do that if the U.K. stays within the Customs Union and the Single Market, because that would take away the need for any special arrangement, or bespoke solution, for Northern Ireland.

In the end, the British didn't vote to leave because of the euro. They're not even members of the currency union. Even the refugee crisis hardly affected the country.

I would like a UK fully engaged in Europe, but I can't decide in place of the British. I see that for the moment they want to be more in retreat.

I do not share the half-in, half-out attitude to the EU of some in Britain. Britain's place is in Europe.

We believe that from both a German and a Polish perspective, it is desirable for Great Britain to remain in the European Union.

The next leader of this country needs to be someone who believes heart and soul that Britain should be outside the European Union.

The referendum was clear: the British people voted to leave the single market and to take back control of our borders.

If I am prime minister, we will come out of the European Union, and part of that will be control of free movement.

Under Conservative, Labour, and coalition governments, the U.K. was never willing to accept all the moves to union or all the requirements of the E.U.

Calling into question the Touquet deal on the pretext that Britain has voted for Brexit and will have to start negotiations to leave the union doesn't make sense.

I believe the United Kingdom will be worse off outside the E.U. It will not have the influence it has in the world today.

There must be no attempts to remain inside the E.U., no attempts to rejoin it through the back door, and no second referendum.

Because Scotland and Northern Ireland want to remain part of the E.U., there is the quite real possibility that Scotland and even Northern Ireland might now choose to go their own way on membership within the E.U. and the 'United Kingdom' would suddenly effectively be only England and Wales.

If Britain votes to leave the European Union, then that could have huge implications for the entire island of Ireland and, given all the predictions, would run counter to the democratic wishes of the Irish people.