Good Friday pact ‘is on life support’

LORD Trimble has warned the Good Friday Agreement is ‘on life support’ as the UK and EU bicker over Brexit.

The former first minister of Northern Ireland, who was one of the architects of the peace deal, urged the DUP to commit to returning to the Stormont executive.

In the foreword to a report by the Policy Exchange think-tank, he wrote: ‘As we approach the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement it is clear that its institutions are in crisis and indeed on life support. The Government says that its policy is designed to create the conditions for the re-establishment of the functioning of the Good Friday Agreement.

‘It is involved in a test of wills with the EU which it cannot flunk.’

Lord Trimble is a former leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, but now sits in the Lords as a Tory peer.

The DUP, which has been the leading unionist party in the province since 2003, is currently blocking the formation of a power-sharing executive at Stormont until problems with the Northern Ireland protocol are resolved.

In his article, Lord Trimble said: ‘The present Unionist leadership today has a part to play. It has to show that it fully commits itself to bring back power-sharing not only because it is right but because it will impose a duty on all other parties in the dispute to act responsibly.’