Ireland border a ‘Brexit delay tactic’

THE ISSUE of Northern Ireland’s border with the Republic of Ireland is being used to try to keep Britain in a customs union with the EU and frustrate Brexit, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said yesterday.

The question of the border between Britain and the EU on the island of Ireland has become one of the biggest sticking points of the Brexit negotiations.

The EU and Britain agreed in December that a final resolution of the issue could not be reached without discussion of the future relationship, due to start in March.

“The issue of the Northern Ireland border is being used quite a lot politically to try to keep the UK in the customs union and effectively the single market, so we can’t really leave the EU,” Johnson told Sky News.

Johnson was speaking after Sky reported details of a letter Johnson had written to Prime Minister Theresa May in which he said it was “wrong to see the task as maintaining no border” on Ireland.

Asked about the letter, Johnson said it had been mischaracterised and urged Sky to publish it in full.

“What the letter says is that actually there are very good solutions we could put in place that would prevent any kind of hard border,” he said.

The EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, said on Tuesday that the EU would push ahead with contingency planning for the island of Ireland in the absence of concrete ideas on how to reconcile Britain’s desire to leave the single market and customs union with pledges to avoid a hard border. – Reuters