Northern Ireland’s main unionist party welcomed the British government’s threat to rip up parts of the post-Brexit trading arrangements for the region, even if unilateral action by London triggered a trade war with Brussels.
“Thank goodness we are now getting to the point that we are now preparing to act,” Democratic Unionist party leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson told the BBC.
His party, runner-up in elections to the Stormont assembly last week that returned the nationalist Sinn Féin party as the biggest in Northern Ireland for the first time in a century, has already announced it will boycott the formation of a power-sharing executive until his Brexit demands are met.
But Donaldson on Wednesday threatened to go further and block even the return of the Stormont assembly by refusing to participate in the election of a speaker — even though in the absence of a fully-functioning executive, the assembly would have limited powers. Jon Tonge, politics professor at the University of Liverpool, said such a move would be “extraordinary”.
Under the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which ended three decades of conflict between republicans seeking to end British rule of the region and loyalists battling to stay in the UK, the consent of both unionist and nationalist communities is required for the formation of local institutions.
UK foreign secretary Liz Truss, who has failed to secure a deal in months of talks with the EU, said in a statement late on Tuesday the current trading arrangements “fail to properly address the real issues facing Northern Ireland and in some cases would take us backwards”.
She added: “We will not shy away from taking action to stabilise the situation” if no deal could be reached on the so-called Northern Ireland protocol, which put a customs border in the Irish Sea for goods travelling between Britain and the region. The DUP and other unionists say the agreement treats Northern Ireland like a separate country.
Michelle O’Neill, Sinn Féin’s first minister-in-waiting, told reporters that “the protocol is here to stay”. She has said Northern Ireland is being “held to ransom” by the DUP and the protocol threats reflected the “wranglings of the Tory party” rather than an attempt to find solutions that would allow local politicians to get back to work.
Northern Ireland’s newly elected legislators will on Friday sign a register at the Stormont assembly in which they designate themselves “unionist”, “nationalist” or “other” — a big step to ensure cross-community consent.
“We will be there on Friday to sign the roll and we will make a decision as to how we proceed,” said Donaldson, who has announced he will remain as an MP at Westminster for now and only resign his seat to take his newly elected place at Stormont once the protocol issue has been resolved.
“Obviously, I’m waiting to see what the [UK] government has to say [about the protocol], that is the priority right now to ensure that what the government is saying is moving us in the right direction,” he added.
Thomas Byrne, Ireland’s minister for EU affairs, said there was “incredible frustration” among European partners at the UK’s stance and a failure to allow an assembly would be “a betrayal of the electorate”.
The US government urged London and Brussels to “resolve differences and bring negotiations to a successful conclusion”.
“We recognise that there have been challenges over the implementation of the Northern Ireland protocol and that talks continue between the UK and EU to resolve these issues. The best path forward is a pragmatic one that requires courage, co-operation, and leadership,” a White House spokesperson said.
Additional reporting by Felicia Shwartz in Washington
