Boris raises prospect of hard border in Ireland
BORIS JOHNSON has suggested that Northern Ireland may have to accept enhanced border checks after Brexit in a letter to the Prime Minister that was leaked last night.
The Foreign Secretary suggested that “even if a hard border is reintroduced” in Ireland, it would not significantly affect trade across the UK’S land border with the EU, in an apparent reversal of his previous position.
Mr Johnson said as recently as November that returning to a hard border was “unthinkable” and would be “economic and political madness”.
Mr Johnson’s letter, which was written after Theresa May’s Brexit “war Cabinet” discussed the border issue on Feb 7, was leaked ahead of a speech today by Sir John Major in which the former prime minister is expected to warn against allowing Brexit to undermine the Good Friday Agreement.
Theresa May will today warn Brussels against breaking up Britain as the EU publishes a proposed Brexit withdrawal agreement that “threatens the constitutional integrity of the UK”.
Ministers believe the EU is trying to force through a “land grab” with a plan to keep Northern Ireland inside a customs union that would effectively move the border to the Irish Sea. A leaked summary of the 120-page document, described as “explosive” by sources in Brussels, refers to a “single regulatory space” covering the island of Ireland, which would also remain subject to the European Court of Justice.
The DUP accused Brussels of an “absolutely intolerable interference in the internal affairs of the UK”.
Mr Johnson earlier compared crossing the Irish border to moving in and out of the Congestion Charge zone in London. He said money was taken from drivers’ bank accounts in the capital “without any need for border checks”. The Foreign Secretary said in his letter to Mrs May that it was “wrong to see the task as maintaining ‘no border’” in Ireland because a border already exists, and that the Government’s task would be to “stop this border becoming significantly harder”.
He also wrote: “Even if a hard border is reintroduced, we would expect to see 95 per cent plus of goods pass the border [without] checks.”
The 18-page letter, leaked to Sky News, was distributed among the 11 members of the Cabinet’s Brexit subcommittee before they met last week at Chequers. A spokesman for Mr Johnson said he had been trying to set out “how we could manage a border without infrastructure or related checks and controls” while protecting UK, Irish, Northern Irish and EU interests.
Lord Heseltine, the former trade secretary, described the letter as “the most remarkable revelation of duplicity”.
Downing Street faces a fight with Brussels over the omission from its proposed withdrawal agreement Mrs May’s two preferred options for solving the Irish border issue: through a future UKEU trade deal or via unique “technical solutions”. It devotes five chapters to the option of Northern Ireland retaining full regulatory alignment with the EU.
A third option is set out as a legally binding protocol in the draft agreement which reflects the EU view that the Irish border issue can only be solved by Britain effectively staying in the customs union and single market.
A senior government source said last night: “The EU should be absolutely clear that the Prime Minister is not going to sign up to anything that threatens the constitutional integrity of the UK or its single market.”
Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament’s chief Brexit negotiator, told MEPS the Parliament wanted Northern Ireland to remain subject to EU law.
It must have escaped the notice of the EU’S Brexit negotiators, but Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom. Michel Barnier and his Brussels cohorts have no business dictating to this country how to preserve its territorial integrity. Yet so confused has the British Government’s position become that they have been emboldened to do just that. A draft of the so-called divorce treaty to be published today is expected to propose that, if the UK wants to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland, then Northern Ireland will have to remain in the EU customs union and aligned to European single market rules. Both of these outcomes have been rejected by Theresa May for the UK as a whole. To treat Northern Ireland differently, therefore, would open up once again the questions of national identity that have caused such misery in the past.
Both the British and Irish governments say they do not want a hard border on the island, but this may now be impossible to avoid. Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, has written to the Prime Minister suggesting that Brexit must not get hung up on this issue since border checks can be mostly carried out electronically. However, that would require EU co-operation, whereas so far Brussels seems more intent on driving a wedge between London and Dublin. Moreover, if the withdrawal agreement is enshrined in international law in the way the EU wants, Northern Ireland’s status within the UK would change – something that the DUP, which is currently propping up Mrs May’s government, will refuse to accept.
What we are seeing now is the result of the prechristmas fudge, when Mrs May promised the DUP that the province would not be treated separately from the rest of the UK but that a hard border would also be avoided. The EU seems to share Mr Johnson’s view that this is no longer possible now that the Government has ruled out keeping the UK in the customs union and single market.
In fact, even a customs union is not enough for EU officials. They want Northern Ireland to be aligned in other areas, such as animal, medicine and food standards, to prevent the Irish border becoming a back door for smugglers.
Britain has proposed a unique customs arrangement that would make the UK responsible for customs checks on the EU border. With goodwill from Dublin and Brussels, an amicable resolution can be achieved.