Boris Johnson signals readiness to scrap Northern Ireland’s post-Brexit trading deal

Boris Johnson signalled on Tuesday that he was ready to tear up post-Brexit trading arrangements for Northern Ireland, calling the current agreement with the EU “not sustainable in its current form” despite an appeal from his Irish counterpart not to take unilateral action.

Customs checks in the Irish Sea on goods travelling between Britain and Northern Ireland have scuppered the formation of a power-sharing executive in the devolved region following elections last week in which the nationalist Sinn Féin emerged as the biggest party in a historic shift.

Sinn Féin, long associated with the paramilitary IRA and committed to Irish reunification, has the right to appoint first minister.

But the Democratic Unionist party, which says the trade arrangements dubbed the Northern Ireland protocol are undermining the region’s place within the UK and must be scrapped, is boycotting a new executive at Stormont until London acts.

Sinn Féin’s leader in Northern Ireland, Michelle O’Neill, and Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, DUP leader, both spoke to Johnson on Tuesday morning, as did Ireland’s taoiseach, Micheál Martin. The tug of war over the formation of an executive raises the prospect of months of political limbo, without a fully functioning devolved executive in Northern Ireland.

Johnson told Martin the situation with the protocol in Northern Ireland was “now very serious” and was undermining the 1998 Good Friday Agreement which ended the Troubles — three decades of conflict between republicans fighting to drive the British out of Northern Ireland and loyalists battling to stay in the UK.

The prime minister, Downing Street said, told Martin that the UK’s “repeated efforts” had not succeeded in securing necessary moves from Brussels and that “the UK government would take action to protect peace and political stability in Northern Ireland if solutions could not be found”.

London is already drafting legislation that would allow the UK to abandon the protocol — a move that threatens a trade war with Brussels.

Dublin, which believes Brussels has made genuine concessions to make the protocol more workable, is frustrated at London’s stance and Martin urged Johnson “to avoid any unilateral action”.

Maros Šefčovič, European Commission vice-president, rejected Johnson’s arguments that the protocol needed to be altered, or scrapped. “The protocol, as a cornerstone of the [Brexit] withdrawal agreement, is an international agreement. Its renegotiation is not an option. The European Union is united in this position,” he said in a statement on Tuesday.

O’Neill, the region’s first minister-in-waiting, wrote on Twitter after her call with Johnson that “the public here can’t be a pawn in the British government’s game of chicken with the EU”.

With a paralysed Stormont unable to pass a budget and provide cost-of-living relief to people, O’Neill said the DUP’s refusal to form an executive was “punishing the public”.

Under the peace deal, traditional nationalist and unionist communities must both be represented in a power-sharing executive, but Donaldson is demanding a deal on the protocol as the price of his party’s participation.

“We cannot nominate to an executive until decisive action is taken on the protocol,” he said in a tweet after his call with Johnson.

Although unionist parties, which oppose the protocol, won more votes than nationalist parties in last Thursday’s elections, a majority in the Stormont assembly believes the current arrangements can be made to work.

The assembly is expected to meet on Friday to elect a new Speaker, but there is no prospect of a new executive being formed until the protocol dispute is settled.

That means caretaker ministers will remain in their posts, but with limited powers, for up to 24 weeks, following which there could be new elections.

The UK government on Tuesday also tweaked planned legislation that had outraged politicians and civil society on both sides of the Irish border by providing immunity from prosecution for all Troubles-era atrocities.

Under the revised plans, only people who co-operate with a new Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery would be eligible for amnesty. Victims’ advocates said that let them down.

“They’re trying to fudge it a bit, to say they’re listening but there’s nothing that tells me this is anything beyond a de facto amnesty,” said Grainne Teggart, campaign manager for rights group Amnesty International UK.

The government also reiterated a commitment to long-promised cultural legislation to give the Irish and Ulster Scots languages official status in Northern Ireland.

Additional reporting by Andy Bounds in Brussels