UK in new drive to break impasse over Irish border
BRITISH negotiators will return to Brussels tomorrow with fresh legal wording in an attempt to break the impasse over the Irish border backstop.
Attorney General Geoffrey Cox and Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay will meet their EU counterparts for the second time this week in a bid to win assurance on the backstop.
The aim is to win guarantees that would convince MPs the backstop should be temporary after Mr Cox warned in legal advice last November that it could last indefinitely.
It came as EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said Brexit negotiations were now in ‘God’s hands’.
Meanwhile, it was claimed Theresa May had again been warned by ministers she could face dozens of Government resignations unless she publicly rules out a No Deal Brexit.
Mr Cox and Mr Barclay had a two-hour meeting in Brussels yesterday with EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier and his team on how to break the current deadlock.
Last night Mr Barclay said: ‘We had a positive meeting I with Michel Barnier and his team. We went through and explained where we see the parliamentary majority being and what our strategy is.’
He added: ‘We agreed a next step forward so we’ll be engaging again mid-week.’
Lawyers will flank Mr Barclay and Mr Cox to talk through potential changes to either the Brexit withdrawal treaty or additional declarations.
Complicating matters further, Ireland ruled out any changes to the Withdrawal Agreement.
Sources say Brussels is open to performing ‘keyhole surgery’ to the deal to try to solve the Irish border backstop issue.
Mrs May is seeking changes which would make it either time-limited, give Britain a unilateral exit mechanism or set up alternative technological arrangements to keep the Northern Irish border open.
But Irish foreign minister Simon Coveney yesterday shut down the ideas. He ruled out a time limit and a unilateral exit clause and said alternative technological arrangements – the method favoured by Brexiteers – do not yet exist.
Mr Coveney said: ‘The responsibility to resolve this problem needs to lie where the problem is, which is in London. We would be very foolish if we allowed the onus to solve that problem to switch away from Westminster to Dublin. We will not be steamrolled in this process.’
Attempts to strike a swift post-Brexit trade deal with Japan stalled yesterday after officials in Tokyo reportedly took offence to a Government letter sent last month.
In the message, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt and International Trade Secretary Liam Fox warned that ‘time is of the essence’. UK officials say it was written in diplomatic language.
But according to the Financial Times, Japanese officials felt it was high-handed and accusing them of dragging their feet.
‘We have agreed on a next step’