Merkel hosts UK PM Johnson in Berlin as Brexit drama grows

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson begins his high-stakes European tour on Wednesday by travelling to Germany for meetings with Chancellor Angela Merkel as he seeks to persuade the European Union to reopen talks on Brexit.

The meeting comes as positions on Britain's divorce from the EU have hardened on both sides of the English Channel, hurtling Britain toward a no-deal exit that would damage both economies.

The EU refuses to renegotiate the deal it hammered out with Johnson's predecessor. But his office says "there's no prospect of a deal" unless the EU scraps controversial language designed to prevent the return of border checks on the Irish border but could leave Britain tied to the bloc indefinitely.

"I think it's a bit paradoxical that the EU side is talking about us putting up all the barriers. We've made it clear 1,000 times we don't want to see any checks on the Northern Irish frontier at all," Johnson told ITV. "By contrast, it is the EU who currently claim that the single market and the plurality of the single market require them to have such checks. I don't think that's true."
"Those against the backstop, and not proposing realistic alternatives, in fact support reestablishing a border," Tusk tweeted Tuesday. "Even if they do not admit it."
"He's (Johnson) saying ... he will negotiate energetically in the pursuit of a deal, he's very happy to sit down and to talk to EU leaders, but he's making clear that the backstop needs to be removed," Robert Jenrick, a British cabinet minister, told the BBC on Wednesday. "That is the only prospect of securing a deal."