Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
TONE DOWN THE RHETORIC
Colum: DUP has to work with us
POWERSHARING could be threatened if unionists continue to demand the “unrealistic” scrapping of new Irish Sea trade arrangements, the SDLP said.
Colum Eastwood’s warning came as the Irish government revealed it would be open to “modest extensions” of current grace periods that limit the bureaucracy associated with the contentious Northern Ireland Protocol.
He urged the DUP to end talk of political boycotts, dial down the rhetoric and instead join with other Stormont parties to find workable solutions to issues linked to the new regulatory and customs processes on Irish Sea shipments.
Calls from the DUP and other unionist parties in the region to ditch or suspend the protocol have intensified in recent weeks amid evidence of some disruption to trade arriving in the region from Great Britain.
Asked by RTE if there could be a threat to powersharing if unionists took an increasingly hard-line approach to the protocol, Mr Eastwood said: “Yes, I think there could be and unionism needs to learn the lesson that they should have learned a number of times over the past 100 years – the British Government will let you down and if you keep going to the right you’re going to end up in a worse position when you come back to the table.
“So come and work with us, let’s get together, the spirit of powersharing is what’s important right now, working in partnership to deal with the problems.
“But continuing to run to the microphone, have petitions and talk about protests and all that – none of that works, it’s not based in reality.”