Boris’s Brexit bluff: PM accused of privately bowing down to EU on trade to NI

Boris Johnson discusses Northern Ireland protocol

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This week the Prime Minister said he was trying to eliminate “ludicrous” border checks introduced between Britain and Northern Ireland. The customs checks were introduced as part of Mr Johnson’s Brexit withdrawal agreement signed with the EU in 2019.

The deal has led to bureaucratic paperwork and red tape, disrupting trade across within the UK across the Irish Sea and sparking outrage in Northern Ireland.

In an interview with the BBC this week, Mr Johnson vowed action on the Protocol and threatened to trigger Article 16.

The measure allows him to take unilateral action to remove the customs checks if “serious economic, societal or environmental difficulties that are liable to persist, or to diversion of trade”.

“What we are doing is what I think is removing the unnecessary protuberances and barriers that have grown up and we are getting the barnacles off the thing and sandpapering into shape,” the Prime minister told a BBC Spotlight programme.

“If it looks as though the EU is going to be very dogmatic about it and we continue to be in an absurd situation so you can’t bring in rose bushes with British soil into Northern Ireland, you can’t bring British sausages into Northern Ireland, then frankly I’m going to, we’ll have to take further steps.”

However, despite his rhetoric, it is claimed privately the Prime Minister is doing everything he can to make the Protocol work in its current form.

“Whitehall is throwing the kitchen sink at this thing,” the chief executive of Manufacturing Northern Ireland, Stephen Kelly, told the Financial Times.

“I cannot remember ever seeing this level of engagement from right across the UK Government.

“Officials are working their rear ends off to try and make it work.”

Aodhán Connolly, director of the Northern Ireland Retail Consortium told the publication the UK Government had never been so involved.

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He said: “The Northern Ireland business community is working flat out with the government to find solutions and, to be fair, we are getting enhanced engagement like never before.”

The EU has insisted the Protocol must be implemented in full.

The Commission is already taking legal action against the UK for extension the grace periods for checks on some goods.

Extra paperwork due to be implemented at the start of this month was delayed until September by the UK Government in order to give traders more time to adapt to the new relationship.

Mr Johnson is under pressure from Unionists in Northern Ireland and members of his own party to scrap the Protocol in its entirety.

Conservative MP John Redwood said: “The UK Government should tell the EU it is going to enforce the integrity of the UK’s internal market as promised in the Agreement by allowing easy entry of all GB goods going to NI for delivery there.

“They should not be held up by the EU.”

Meanwhile, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) have started legal proceedings against the Government, saying the protocol is incompatible with the Act of Union 1800, the Northern Ireland Act of 1998 and the Good Friday Agreement.

DUP leader and Northern Ireland First Minister Arlene Foster said: “Neither the Northern Ireland Assembly, the Northern Ireland Executive nor the people of Northern Ireland consented to the Protocol being put in place or the flow of goods from GB to NI being impeded by checks.”

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