PM Johnson heads to Belfast amid deepening EU row
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson stepped into an increasingly bitter row yesterday when he visited Northern Ireland to urge the formation of a power-sharing executive, which is currently being blocked by a Brexit dispute.
In a historic development, the role of Northern Ireland’s first minister is set to be taken by the pro-Irish party Sinn Fein, after it triumphed in elections to the Stormont assembly earlier this month.
But the pro-UK Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), angered at the “Northern Ireland Protocol” agreed as part of Britain’s Brexit deal with the European Union, blocked the election of a speaker at Stormont.
Mr Johnson will meet all parties involved and is expected to tell them that London will “play its part to ensure political stability”, but that Northern Ireland politicians must “get back to work” to deal with “bread and butter issues”, according to a statement from his office Sunday.
The DUP is refusing to help form an executive until the protocol is changed to get rid of trade checks between Northern Ireland and mainland Great Britain, which it believes are threatening the province’s status within the UK.
Mr Johnson’s government also insists the protocol is threatening the delicate balance of peace in Northern Ireland between the proIrish nationalist community and those in favour of continued union with the UK.
It has warned it will trigger Article 16 of the Brexit deal to suspend the agreement, or legislate to eliminate its requirements from UK law, unless the EU agrees to change it.
Sinn Fein’s Northern Ireland leader Michelle O’Neill accused the DUP of holding the British-ruled territory to “ransom”.
“I’ve spoken with Boris Johnson himself. He will be here on Monday. I intend to put it to him directly that he needs to stop pandering to the DUP,” she told reporters last week.
The UK government was “playing a game of chicken with the [European] commission right now, and we’re caught in the middle”, she added.