Fox: We’ll talk about Irish border after EU trade deal

LIAM Fox ramped up the pressure on Brussels last night as he warned there would be no agreement on the Irish border until the UK and EU have reached a trade deal.

The International Trade Secretary indicated that Britain would not meet the EU’s ten-day deadline to resolve the border issue before trade talks can start.

He said a final position on Ireland could not be reached until it was known what the ‘end state’ of the UK-EU relationship after Brexit would be.

And he blamed Brussels for the slow progress of negotiations, saying the European Commission was too obsessed with ‘ever closer union’ to compromise.

It came as former cabinet minister Owen Paterson accused Irish politicians of trying to ‘blackmail’ the UK over the issue of how to maintain the current ‘soft’ border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic after Brexit.

The Irish government is adamant there should not be a ‘hard’ border and is putting pressure on the Government to accept a solution whereby either the whole of the UK or just Northern Ireland remains in the EU’s customs union and the single market.

However, the Democratic Unionist Party does not want the province to have to stay in the customs union or single market for the sake of maintaining a soft border if the rest of the UK withdraws.

Former Northern Ireland secretary Mr Paterson said yesterday there should be no question of the province leaving the ‘single market of the UK’ to meet Irish government demands. He accused some politicians of trying to ‘force and blackmail the UK into giving a special status to Northern Ireland outside the rest of the UK’.

Dr Fox also rejected the Irish proposal, saying: ‘We don’t want there to be a hard border but the UK is going to be leaving the customs union and the single market.

‘We have always had exceptions for Ireland… but we can’t come to a final answer to the Irish question until we get an idea of the end state. And until we get into discussions with the EU on the end state that will be very difficult, so the quicker that we can do that the better and we are still in a position where the EU doesn’t want to do that.’

Dr Fox’s comments on Sky News align with the official Downing Street position that ‘nothing is agreed until everything is agreed’.

The UK hopes Brexit talks will move on to trade after a meeting of EU leaders on December 14-15.

Britain is by far Ireland’s most important European trading partner. The Irish sold the UK £11.3billion of goods in the first nine months of this year, according the Office for National Statistics.

Irish MEP Mairead McGuinness told BBC’s Sunday Politics: ‘I hope the UK is not holding the Irish situation to ransom – it is far too serious and far too critical.’

Any arrangement giving Northern Ireland a separate status would be strongly resisted by the DUP, whose ten MPs are in effect keeping Mrs May in Downing Street after she lost her majority in the general election.

DUP leader Arlene Foster told her party conference on Saturday: ‘We will not support any arrangements that create barriers to trade between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK or any suggestion that Northern Ireland, unlike the rest of the UK, will have to mirror European regulations.’

World Trade Organisation director general Roberto Azevedo said yesterday trade with the EU would not stop in the absence of an agreement. He told The Sunday Telegraph: ‘It’s not the end of the world if the UK trades under WTO rules with the EU.’

‘They are trying to blackmail the UK’

FOR a country that relies so heavily on trade with the UK, the rhetoric coming out of Ireland in recent days has been surprisingly belligerent.

In aggressive tones, prime minister Leo Varadkar is threatening to scupper Brexit talks unless Theresa May gives a written pledge that there will be no ‘hard’ border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.

And he’s come up with the bizarre suggestion that Northern Ireland should stay in the single market and customs union (and subject to eU laws), even after the rest of the UK exits.

Irish eU agriculture commissioner Phil Hogan warns gravely that Dublin will ‘play tough’ and veto trade talks if its demands are not met – hugely increasing the chances of Britain leaving with no deal.

Meanwhile, european Council president Donald Tusk has fanned the flames of discord by imposing a ludicrous ten-day deadline to resolve the border question.

Are these politicians deluded? Do they seriously imagine Mrs May would be prepared to destroy the integrity of the UK by leaving part of it effectively still in the eU after Brexit? even in normal times this would be unthinkable. But when the Government relies for its majority on Northern Ireland’s staunchly loyalist Democratic Unionist Party, it’s simply impossible.

And is Mr Varadkar (whose own government is in crisis) reckless enough to risk a ‘no deal’ that would mean the erection of trade barriers between the UK and Ireland, inflicting untold damage on his country’s farming industry?

The fact is that no one wants a hard Irish border after Brexit. So instead of this irresponsible grandstanding, Dublin should be working quietly with British counterparts to achieve a mutually acceptable solution.

But they must also understand that the UK is leaving the eU in March 2019.