Britain will never cave to US pressure over the Northern Ireland Protocol and negotiations over post-Brexit trading arrangements for the country, even if it costs the UK a free trade deal with Washington, the Government has warned.
Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the US House of Representatives had said Congress would not support a free trade agreement (FTA) with the UK if London ripped up the Brexit treaty that created the Irish Sea Border.
Conor Burns said there could be no link between trade talks with the US and the negotiations with Brussels over the Protocol, which means border checks have to be carried out on British goods entering Northern Ireland.
“We seek an ambitious FTA with the US. But there can be no connection between that and doing the right thing for Northern Ireland. None,” Mr Burns, a Northern Ireland minister and Boris Johnson’s special Brexit envoy to the US, said.
“The same as when Mr Obama threatened us with no trade deal if we dared vote for Brexit, maybe they should learn a majority of UK voters do not accept bullying from abroad,” said Tory backbencher John Redwood, who dismissed the US warning as “idle threats”.
Barack Obama warned that Brexit Britain would be “at the back of the queue” for any US trade deal if voters backed Leave in the 2016 referendum.
Liz Truss, the Foreign Secretary, this week promised to publish legislation allowing the Government to unilaterally override parts of the Protocol. The EU has warned that could break international law and risks a trade war with Brussels.
“It is deeply concerning that the United Kingdom is now seeking to unilaterally discard the Northern Ireland Protocol,” Ms Pelosi said after Mr Burns recently led a delegation of UK officials to Washington to explain the British position.
She added, “If the United Kingdom chooses to undermine the Good Friday Accords, the Congress cannot and will not support a bilateral free trade agreement with the United Kingdom.”
The Protocol prevents the need for an inflammatory hard border on the island of Ireland by moving checks on goods to the Irish Sea. Northern Ireland also continues to follow some EU rules but has unique dual access to both the UK and EU markets.
Maros Sefcovic, the European Commission vice-president, said the “only way” to protect the Good Friday Agreement was with “joint solutions”rather than unilateral action, after meeting pro-Protocol US Congressmen in Brussels. Ms Truss will also meet the trade committee delegation in London before it travels on to Belfast.
The Government argues the Protocol itself is undermining the Good Friday Agreement because it does not have the support of unionists.
The DUP has refused to enter power-sharing in Stormont after May 5 elections that brought a Sinn Fein majority for the first time in Northern Ireland’s 100 year history until the Protocol is ripped up or replaced.
“If Nancy Pelosi wants to see the agreement protected, then she has to recognise it is the Protocol undermining the agreement. We will not re-enter the political institutions in full until we see decisive action on the Protocol,” DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson said.
Northern Ireland could introduce red and green customs channels with checks for British goods destined to go on to the EU but not for goods which would stay in the country, Sir Jeffrey said.
That was “one way” to break the deadlock but he told Good Morning Ulster an eventual deal on the Protocol had to be “very different” from the current treaty and should also allow Northern Ireland to benefit from Westminster VAT cuts and subsidies.
Micheál Martin, the Taoiseach of Ireland, accused the UK of not acting within the spirit of the Good Friday Agreement and “moving the goalposts” by threatening unilateral action on the Protocol.
“I believe that the current UK Government has moved too far in a unilateral way,” he said, “in my view that is not fully in accordance with the spirit of the Good Friday Agreement, which involves collaboration working together.”
He said the UK did not respond “in any meaningful way” to Brussels’ offers to cut Protocol checks in October last year.
“I have to nail this really this idea that somehow the European Union is being inflexible, and this is just not the truth. And it doesn’t stack up,” he told Good Morning Ulster.
He added, “The challenge I see here is the goalposts [from the UK] keep on changing in respect of the Protocol.”
Simon Coveney, Ireland’s foreign minister, met with Ms Truss in Turin, Italy. He said, “I made clear Ireland’s opposition to the U.K. breaching international law. The UK needs to get back to talks with the EU.”
Mr Martin is in Belfast on Friday to meet with political leaders and attacked the DUP for being undemocratic for blocking the restoration of the Northern Ireland Assembly.
He also ruled out any border poll on Irish unity in the remaining two years of his government after Sinn Fein’s leader predicted a reunification referendum in the next decade.
