Fox brushes off EU deadline on Irish border
BRITAIN will not meet the European Union’s 10-day deadline to resolve the Irish border issue, Liam Fox has signalled, as a former Tory Cabinet minister accused Dublin of “blackmail” by trying to force Northern Ireland to stay outside the UK after Brexit.
The International Trade Secretary 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. Dublin put fresh pressure on the Government last night, and called on Theresa May to accept a solution that would see either the whole of the UK or just Northern Ireland remain in the single market and customs union.
Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, has warned the Prime Minister that she has 10 days to reach a deal if she wants to make a Brexit breakthrough at the European Council summit on Dec 14.
Ireland has threatened to block talks on the future relationship between the EU and the UK unless it is given “cred- ible answers and a credible road map” to ensure that there is no hard border.
Rejecting the proposal, Dr Fox said: “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.” He told Sky News’s Sunday with Niall Paterson: “We have always had exceptions for Ireland – whether it’s in our voting rights or our rights of residence in the UK, we have always accepted a certain asymmetry and that
will have to be part of whatever agreement we come to with the EU, 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. 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 also blamed the European Commission’s “obsession” with forging a closer union for the delays in the Brexit talks. “The EU countries need to consider the welfare and the economic prosperity of their people, as opposed to the obsession of the commission about the concept of ever closer union,” he said.
Owen Paterson, the former Northern Ireland secretary, clashed with Mairead Mcguinness, the Fine Gael MEP who also serves as one of the vicepresidents of the European Parliament, after she said she hoped “that the United Kingdom is not holding the Irish situation to ransom in these negotiations”.
Mr Paterson told the BBC’S Sunday Politics: “It is really very irresponsible of politicians to make a statement like that, saying they are going to force and blackmail the UK into giving a special status for Northern Ireland outside the rest of the UK.”
Ruth Davidson claimed that European officials were not always straightforward about how far the Brexit talks had progressed. The Scottish Tory leader said members of the European Commission had a “stated position to defend” and that EU negotiations were always a “five-past-midnight job”.
Speaking to the BBC’S Andrew Marr Show, she said: “The people that walk up to the microphones and speak to their home audience don’t always reflect the negotiation and the progress that is going on in the room.”
Arlene Foster, the DUP leader, told The Telegraph: “This is the maximum point of leverage for the Republic of Ireland. It’s a stand-off. You cannot talk about the detail of the border until you get into the trading relationship. It’s artificial to say you are going to sort out the border and then talk abut trade – the two are interlinked.”